THE DISTRICT 
SUPERINTENDENT 



ASSET 

OR 

LIABILITY 



JAMES A.HENSEY 




Oass bX c 

Book -W36 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



THE DISTRICT 
SUPERINTENDENT 

ASSET 

OR 

LIABILITY 
P 



BY 

JAMES A. HENSEY 

INTRODUCTION BY 

AUSTIN M. COURTENAY 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



^* 



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Copyright, 1915, by 
JAMES A.HENSEY 



SEP 14 1915 

C1.A411483 

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To the Supreme Influences in My Life 
MY MOTHER 

MY BOYHOOD PASTOR 

The Rev. Charles W. Baldwin, D.D. 
A Member of the Baltimore Annual Conference 

AND 

MY WIFE 

This little volume is affectionately dedicated by 
The Author 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction Austin M. Courtenay 7 

Prefatory Note Bishop J. F. Berry 13 

Preface 15 

I. Preliminary Statement 17 

II. Defects of the Superintendency 29 

III. Justified by its Works 42 

IV. The Annual Appointment of District Superin- 

tendents 98 

V. Subjecting the Superintendency to an Efficiency 

Test 104 

VI. Removal of the Time Limit from the District 

Superintendency 118 

VII. The Time Limit a Weakness 122 

VIII. The Indeterminate Superintendency — Its Great 

Value 128 

IX. The Indeterminate Superintendency — Objections 

Considered 148 

X. Three Alternatives— Which Shall It Be? 167 

Addenda = 177 



INTRODUCTION 

Persistence of a species demonstrates vi- 
tality, and survival, through a considerable 
period in which opposition has qualified the 
environment, establishes its might and its 
right to exist. 

The same test is applicable to a racial qual- 
ity, a dominant idea, or an institution. Its 
steady continuance through generations, amid 
many fluctuations of opinion and custom, in- 
dicates that it springs out of a natural neces- 
sity and serves a desirable end. It may, in- 
deed, outlive its uses and pass through obso- 
lescence to extinction, but only when appears 
another force or method fitter than the ex- 
istent fittest. 

This principle justifies the district super- 
intendency, that "sub-episcopate" which 
Bishop Simpson called "a part of the plan 
of our itinerant general superintendency." 
No other of our Methodist governmental de- 
vices has endured such a ceaseless artillery of 

7 



INTRODUCTION 

criticism, and nevertheless it has remained un- 
changed from the very beginning. 

In 1784, at the Christmas Conference, twelve 
men were chosen for ordination by Dr. Coke, 
under Mr. Wesley's authorization, that they 
might administer the sacraments. This was 
the crying need of the nascent church. For 
of its eighty-three ministers not one was 
entitled to exercise any office but that of 
evangelist-preacher. And of these, twelve 
alone — an apostolic number — were regarded 
by their brethren as qualified to "make full 
proof of the ministry." 

In order that their services as presbyters 
might reach the whole church, they were 
directed to administer in circuits adjacent to 
their own. There was at first no thought of 
executive supervision. 

But within a year Asbury, who was ex- 
pected to exercise episcopal authority in 
person from the Hudson to the Yadkin, dis- 
cerned the expediency of assigning these 
elders to districts in which they might act in 
his stead. To them he delegated his authority, 
without limitations, so far as the records 
show, save that of locality and of his power 

8 



INTRODUCTION 

of review and veto. The Minutes of 1785 show 
twelve districts thus manned. 

Thus originated the system. It was not 
fashioned out of theory. It was a practical 
device for an emergency. It was born, full- 
grown, from the brain of a constructive genius. 
And its simplicity, its freedom from complex 
mechanism, has allowed adaptation in changed 
conditions, all the way from a three-circuit 
district on the frontier to the modern district 
of ninety stations in and about a great city. 

No title, save "elder," was used until 1789, 
when more men than were needed for districts 
had been ordained presbyters, when those as- 
signed were called "presiding elders." The 
term first appeared in connection with As- 
bury's rickety child — "The Council" — which 
lingered but two futile years. 

At first there was no limit of time. All 
appointments were in fact, as in law, subject 
solely to the decision of the bishop, and rarely 
ran, for the preachers, beyond one year. 

The Conference of 1792 placed the first 
restriction on this power by rendering it im- 
possible for Asbury — the autocrat of his hard- 
riding cavalry of the cross — to continue an 

9 



INTRODUCTION 

elder in the same district longer than four 
years. Later the barrier to episcopal pre- 
rogative was removed to six years. 

During the period from 1785 to 1792 the 
church had grown from 52 circuits to 137; 
from 83 preachers to 266; from 14,988 mem- 
bers to 52,109 ; but there were only 18 districts 
as against 12. In this time — eight years — 
forty-seven elders had served on districts, and 
of them as follows : 3 for 8 years, 2 for 7 years, 
3 for 6 years, and 3 for 4 years ; a total of 11, 
of whom 6 were of the original 12. They did 
not, however, serve continuously on the same 
districts. This indicates a sense of the need 
for continuity of administration and of a 
center of stability in an era of quick and con- 
stant movement. This limitation to four 
years must be estimated by the resolution of 
1794, that "the preachers would change gen- 
erally every six months, by order of the pre- 
siding elder, whenever it can be made 
convenient." 

Moreover, the rule of limitation was disre- 
garded in a measure, for the following of the 
old guard were reappointed in 1796 and there- 
after, serving continuously the number of 

10 



INTRODUCTION 

years appended to their names — Ellis (13), 
Reed (13), Whatcoat (14), Lee (14), Poy- 
thress (15), and Garrettson (17). 

It is noteworthy that the time limit and 
the new name mark the only modifications in 
this office from 1784 to 1915 — a period of one 
hundred and thirty-one years — in which a 
bewildering variety of ministerial offices and 
functions have been devised, and a series of 
significant changes has been legislated as to 
every other member and servant of the Church, 
including even the episcopacy. 

The duties also of the office have multiplied 
until one wonders if the camel can bear an- 
other straw. The Discipline specifies some 
sixty-eight functions, besides such as are in- 
ferential, all quite apart from those of the 
Ordination Vow and of the Bishop's Cabinet, 
which last exists without a shred of legislation. 

Now, through the long weaving of this com- 
plex web of duties, the office, in essence and 
form, has remained unchanged. This con- 
stitutes a strong presumption of its efficiency 
and argument for its continuance. 

An experience of numerous years — an un- 
broken pastorate of every type of charge, and 

li 



INTRODUCTION 

now a brief period of district work — enables 
me perhaps to form an opinion from without 
and within. It began in a youthful enthusi- 
asm, akin to hero-worship, for the eldership; 
it progressed through a time of query, doubt 
and criticism; it halted on a dead center of 
belief that the office was obsolete, then that it 
should be modernized, and if perpetuated, 
made elective; it was jostled into a reversal 
of tolerance, of recognition of values, and 
finally of conviction, formed long since but 
much confirmed by running the machine, that 
the district superintendency is essential to the 
unity, efficiency, harmony, and even continu- 
ity of our system. 

From this point of view I estimate and 
cordially commend this volume — the second 
ever written on the subject — of my long-time, 
highly esteemed friend, who notably exempli- 
fies the significance of this office in such an 
economy as that of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 

Austin M. Courtenay. 

Columbus, Ohio, 
March 23, 1915. 



12 



PREFATORY NOTE 

After reading the forceful chapters of this 
little book I am more than ever convinced 
that the district superintendent is one of the 
chief assets of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. It is surely an office susceptible of 
immense expansion and usefulness. And since 
the inauguration of episcopal supervision by 
areas, that usefulness has not been in any 
degree curtailed. 

Those who know the author need not to be 
told that he is himself a fine illustration of 
his major contention. I have not known a 
superintendent who in larger measure has had 
vision, originality, initiative, and force. The 
Binghamton District has greatly prospered 
under his administration. Methods which 
were such radical departures from the tradi- 
tional as to seem almost revolutionary, have 
produced altogether wholesome and gratifying 
results. 

It did not require the concluding chapters 

13 



PREFATORY NOTE 

of the book to create in my mind the convic- 
tion that the district superintendency, like 
the pastorate, should be unlimited in term. 
My judgment is that provision for an unlimited 
term of service would shorten the average 
term. The man who would remain on a dis- 
trict for six years or more would then be 
retained because of his absolute adaptation 
to his task, and not because an earlier re- 
moval would be regarded as a reflection upon 
his administration. 

At any rate, Dr. Hensey has given us a 
breezy, stimulating volume, for which I be- 
speak a candid reading. Even those who 
utterly disagree with his conclusions will 
enjoy his exceedingly able presentation of an 
issue which is just now very much alive. 

Joseph F. Berry. 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 
March 5, 1915. 



14 



PEEFACE 

After a quarter of a century in the pas- 
torate of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as 
student supply and preacher in charge, the 
author found himself in the district super- 
intendency. Always an earnest believer in 
and defender of the system of district super- 
vision, he thought its duties few and problems 
simple. He was startled to find his preconcep- 
tions seriously at fault. He turned to the 
lierature of the church, but in vain. Moun- 
tains of books there were on all conceivable 
subjects, but no direct, frank recognition of 
the objections usually urged against the super- 
intendency or elucidation of the possibilities 
and achievements of the office — what it is or 
should be, what it does or should do. 

He soon found that his fellow ministers 
were as much mistaken about the office as he 
had always been, and that the laity had but a 
fragmentary conception of the purposes and 
possibilities of the superintendency. The 

15 



PREFACE 

things he was asked to do by laymen who had 
grown gray in the service of the church, and 
things he was expected to do by certain 
ministers, would make an interesting, amus- 
ing, and pathetic chapter. He began to keep 
an account of the objections to the office, its 
achievements and possibilities. It commenced 
in a railway station on the back of an envelope 
— and this little book is the result. 

If the ministry and laity shall come to a 
better understanding of the office and a 
keener appreciation of its supreme necessity 
in the economy of the church, and if the 
church at large shall be led to address herself 
to the constructive development of the district 
superintendency, the author shall be abun- 
dantly repaid for the time and labor devoted 
to this task. 

James A. Hensey. 

Binghamton, New York, 
February 27, 1915. 



16 



CHAPTER I 

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 

An Important Question 

Has the time come to abolish the district 
superintendency in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church? For more than a century this ques- 
tion, in various guises, has been discussed. 
All kinds of suggestions, ranging from slight 
modification to complete elimination, have 
been made. The church has listened patiently 
to the arguments and left the office as it 
was. Critical tongues have hurled their verbal 
javelins at the district superintendency; 
brilliant minds have clamped it in the public 
stocks; keen logicians have made formidable 
lists of its shortcomings ; prophets have labeled 
it as a discard, but still it has lived. 

Occasionally the lamp of discussion has 
burned low and even gone out, and the super- 
intendent has pursued his work in peace. But 
soon across the hills a solitary cry would be 
heard and the whole pack would take the trail 

17 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

again. So it will probably continue until the 
end. 

If the foes of the district superintendency 
have been keen and audacious in attack, its 
friends have been resourceful and formidable 
in defense. The bill of indictment has been 
answered by such an appraisement of its 
value that the church has not only been un- 
willing to abandon the office but has refused 
to imperil its utility by dubious experimenta- 
tion. What to do with it finally and how to 
settle the question once for all, who knows? 

Not a Question of Scripture 

This issue cannot be decided by an appeal 
to Scripture. There are no proof texts to be 
quoted on either side. The Holy Spirit in- 
tended that the church, in fitting her message 
and adapting her methods to the ever-varying 
phases of human society, should be free to 
adjust herself to the conditions of any age, 
tribe, or nation. No stereotyped church polity 
is predicated for all future time. 

A Providential Office 

The district superintendency in the Meth- 
18 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 

odist Episcopal Church originated in provi- 
dential expediency. Whatever may be the 
opinion of the reader concerning the present 
value of this office, he will probably admit, if 
he is at all familiar with the history of the 
church, that it did originate in "providential 
expediency." It is the one part of an unusual 
economy that was not thought out in the be- 
ginning. It did not become a part of this 
system by the deliberate intent of man. It 
was born in the stress of a great necessity. 
Its tentative adoption produced such striking 
results that it soon became a part of the 
organic law of the church. The value of the 
district superintendency to the early Meth- 
odist movement in America can hardly be 
questioned, and probably few will deny the 
office an honorable part in the subsequent 
development of this great religious movement. 

The Present Situation 

Has this "providential expediency" ceased, 
or has the rapid and world wide development 
of the church indicated perpetual necessity 
for the office? Do changed conditions inti- 
mate the speedy disappearance of the super- 

19 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

intendency, or is it so essential to the efficiency 
of this unique system of pastoral supply that 
confusion would follow its loss? Advocates 
of both views may be found. 

Prejudice Unfortunate 

It would be a great gain if we could ap- 
proach this discussion with unbiased minds. 
But this is as impossible as it is desirable. 
We have been influenced by what we have seen, 
heard, read, or experienced to such an extent 
that we instinctively answer "Yes" or "No" 
to the opening query of this chapter. This is 
both unfortunate and unavoidable. Even 
though we may not have given serious atten- 
tion to this subject, we have probably acquired 
certain opinions and even convictions as we 
have listened to the voluble conclusions of 
others. To be able to divest oneself of pre- 
vious predilections while approaching the 
study of any question is a great boon. Few 
have the gift. 

Suspension of Judgment Desirable 
Let us hold our preformed opinions in 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 

abeyance as much as possible. The ideal posi- 
tion would be a suspension of judgment until 
all the evidence has been presented to the 
court. If long-held opinions or firmly rooted 
convictions are in the way, we should insist 
upon their temporary subsidence until we 
hear the witnesses and listen to the pleas. 
Unless we are willing to consider the question 
upon its merits and reach such conclusions as 
may be indicated by the facts, even though they 
are not in harmony with our present opinions 
or previous convictions, the discussion can 
bring us little profit. It is hoped that the 
reader will cultivate this mental attitude. 

Avoiding Extremes 

Two extremes should be shunned: super- 
stitious veneration for or implacable hostility 
toward the district superintendency because 
of its age. Defending it at all hazards because 
of its age, or rejecting it immediately because 
it comes to us from a previous generation is 
foolish. It is wrong to perpetuate an office 
because of its past achievements, however 
notable. Is it needed to-day? The final de- 

21 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

cision should be influenced by this considera- 
tion alone. 

Is the Necessity of Yesterday the Need 
of To-Day? 

We do not recall any period in the history 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church when the 
district superintendency was either an impedi- 
ment or an ornamental appendage. The his- 
torians of the denomination have sung its 
praises and extolled its deeds. The great 
leaders of the church have always stoutly de- 
fended the office, and have thrown the weight 
of their influence against every effort to em- 
barrass or destroy it. 

But times change. A former necessity may 
be a present incumbrance. Ecclesiastical 
pioneering has gone with the frontier of other 
times. Though once necessary, the office may 
only be a survival now. The church cannot 
escape serious embarrassment if important 
and expensive parts of her economy are pre- 
served for memory's sake. The work of to- 
day cannot be done with yesterday's time. No 
more can present problems be always solved 
by the methods of other days. If the need is 

22 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 

gone, the office should go. If the newer age 
has brought conditions that can be met only by 
the retention of the office and the readjust- 
ment of its functions, it should be retained 
and the adjustments made. 

What Are the Facts? 

Our single aim shall be to discover the facts 
in connection with the existing system of dis- 
trict superintendency. Partisans may write 
entertainingly, but rarely convincingly — 
except for partisans. We shall try to re- 
view the subject with an open mind. We 
shall be frank with both parties to the con- 
troversy. If we do not succeed in being fair 
to the litigants, it will not be from a lack of 
desire. Not only have the remote recesses of 
our own mind been ransacked for objections 
to the district superintendency, but we have 
appealed to a wide circle of friends — includ- 
ing some of the eminent leaders of the church 
— District Conferences, and various minis- 
terial bodies, to tell us the very worst about 
the system and why, in their judgment, it 
should be abandoned. We have unhesitatingly 
written the most disagreeable things about the 

23 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

superintendency we could think of or others 
have been able to suggest. ( It must be remem- 
bered that these objections do not necessarily 
record the private opinion of the author. They 
are not here because he believes in one or all 
of them. These are the things that have been 
and are being said about the office. That is 
why they are here.) We have made the case 
against the district superintendency just as 
strong as the objections would warrant or the 
language at our command permit. There is 
something to be said on both sides. Not only 
must the accused have the right of defense, 
but the accuser must not be harassed by tech- 
nical restrictions in the presentation of evi- 
dence, limited for time, or embarrassed by 
those who think that evidence should be given 
in veiled allusions, metaphors, or figures of 
speech. 

We have tried to do the same for the dis- 
trict superintendency, with this significant 
difference: in defending the superintendency 
we have confined the argument entirely to the 
things it does. It has been in existence long 
enough to demonstrate its worth. Everything 
the superintendency can do, as now consti- 

24 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 

tuted, it has had opportunity to do many times. 
Has it done them? Has it done enough of 
them to make the men employed and money 
expended worth while? We must use knife 
and scalpel. The "explorative operation" 
must be mercilessly thorough. We must not 
be afraid of the very thing we are after, the 
truth, or conclude that if it is not on our side 
it does not exist. It would be cowardly to 
turn down a side street because we do not 
like to meet the truth face to face. We must 
insist upon knowing all, the worst — the best. 

What the Superintendency has Done 

An untrained, unordained ministry and a 
newly organized church responded quickly to 
the molding touch of the "elder" who fol- 
lowed the footsteps of the eager itinerant, en- 
couraged nascent churches, and brought back 
to the presiding bishop invaluable information 
concerning men, churches, and communities. 
HJs restless, systematized activities have 
given the itineracy a coherency, a continuity, 
a plastic adaptability to the kaleidoscopic 
changes in American communal life that have 
made the growth of the denomination the 

25 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

marvel of the modern religious . world. What- 
ever may be the fate of this Office in the years 
to come — reconstruction, modification, elim- 
ination, or the perpetual maintenance of the 
status quo — the past is secure. It has been 
one of the leading factors in the history of 
the Methodist Episcopal church for more 
than a century and a quarter. 

Under Discussion Since its Origin 

Although a prolific source of discussion and 
provocative of occasional irritation, the office 
has survived to this present day. The duties 
of the superintendency are so peculiar and its 
powers so great that it has always been mis- 
understood, suspected, and opposed by a small 
section of the church. But what of the pres- 
ent, and how about the future? This is an 
iconoclastic age. The church cannot afford to 
become an idol worshiper. She must not be 
guilty of the sin she so freely condemns in 
others. No part of her economy must be al- 
lowed to become a millstone about her neck. 

Changes Inevitable 
Life ever springs from death. Expiring 

26 



PKELIMINARY STATEMENT 

methods often give birth to better ways. We 
can no more prevent change than we can stop 
time. Easier were it to suspend gravitation 
than to say, "This is the final mold!" The 
district superintendency cannot claim im- 
munity from the general law. 

Some think the salvation of the race de- 
pends upon keeping things as they now are, or, 
better yet, getting them back where they once 
were. All change is of the Evil One. Every 
suggested alteration sounds the tocsin of war. 
They get barnacles and principles sadly 
mixed. They want to make the race what it 
once was instead of what it ought to be. 
"From such, good Lord, deliver us!" Those 
who fear change fear life, for that is what 
change is. If the time has come to abandon 
the district superintendency, we will be a sin- 
cere mourner at the bier of the dead — the 
high character and useful career of the de- 
ceased will be our justification — but we will 
not hesitate to say, "Let the corpse be 
buried !" 

Utility Final Test 
Great as are our numbers, we have not one 

27 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

man to waste in a needless office; vast as is 
our wealth, we have no money to spend on a 
superfluity. As the Spirit of God opens our 
eyes to needed changes or needless impedi- 
menta they should be added or subtracted. It 
is useless to go to the world with a thread- 
bare message, and we must not go into the 
great harvest field of humanity burdened 
with antiquated machinery. 



28 



CHAPTER II 
DEFECTS OF THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

Never Adopted by Other Churches 

The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Eng- 
land, the mother of world-wide Methodism, 
has never had an office analogous to the dis- 
trict superintendency. When the various 
branches of Methodism in Canada organized 
the "Methodist Church of Canada" the office 
was omitted from its economy. The diver- 
gent branches of Methodism in the United 
States have not taken it with them (the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is not a 
"divergent branch"). If the superintendency 
exists in other Methodisms, it is in a modified 
and emasculated form. Is not this omission 
from all other Methodist economies signifi- 
cant? It would take us too far afield to dis- 
cuss the reasons for this omission, but the 
fact that the district superintendency is found 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

nowhere else except in the denomination in 
which it originated stares us in the face. If 
we have found it valuable, how have others 
gotten along without it? 

An Expensive System 

The Methodist Year Book for 1914 reported 
the employment of four hundred and ninety- 
three (493) district superintendents. They re- 
ceived a total support of $987,089. Probably 
we now have five hundred men in the superin- 
tendency, absorbing approximately one mil- 
lion dollars of the revenue of the church. 

All shoulders bear this burden, the weak as 
well as the strong. The poorest circuit and the 
frailest appointment are "assessed." No ex- 
cuse is valid and no evasion possible. Other 
apportionments may be met in part or con- 
veniently forgotten; this one must be paid 
regularly and in full. Many churches would 
not pay this apportionment if it w T ere not for 
the pastors' importunate appeals, public and 
private. 

The aggregate cost is undeniably large. 
Its continued expenditure can be justified only 
upon one assumption — the ever-present use- 

30 



DEFECTS OP THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

fulness of the office ; worth while if necessary 
to the efficiency of the most effective system 
of ministerial supply this world has ever 
seen; a crime if no longer needed. 

Conditions Have Changed 

The emergencies which the office was de- 
signed to meet have long since passed away. 
The church is organized, she has a trained 
and ordained ministry, and the frontier, as 
our fathers knew it, can never come back. 
The whole nation is covered with a succes- 
sion of settled communities. Indeed, modern 
systems of transportation and communication 
have made the isolation of other days impos- 
sible. The farthest church is near at hand. 
The most distant hamlet is accessible and kept 
constantly in touch with the great world. 
Could not a simpler and less expensive sys- 
tem be devised to meet present conditions? 

Absorbs the Energies of Many Preachers 

There are enough men in the superin- 
tendency to make two large Annual Confer- 
ences. These men are usually in the prime of 
life and at the maximum of their powers. It is 

31 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

perhaps fair to say that their success in the 
pastorate designated them as qualified for 
this office. The loss of twenty-five or thirty 
men for the episcopacy is not seriously felt. 
A few more could be spared if really needed. 
But when it comes to vacating hundreds of our 
pulpits, well, it should not be done if the ne- 
cessity no longer exists. 

Churches Ignore the Superintendence 

From the very beginning certain churches 
have evaded the district superintendency and 
negotiated directly with prospective pastors. 
This tendency is increasing. Frequently in- 
vitations are extended and accepted before 
any information is vouchsafed the superin- 
tendent. Does not this indicate that his ser- 
vices might be dispensed with altogether? 
Why cannot all the churches do what some of 
them have always insisted upon doing? 

Episcopal Area Solves the Problem 

Since each bishop now has a local residence 
in fact as well as theory, and since his activi- 
ties are confined to a certain jurisdiction, why 
do we need a sub-episcopacy? The present 

32 



DEFECTS OF THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

episcopal area, if too large for efficient super- 
vision, can be easily reduced. "More bishop" 
as well as "More bishops" would be good for 
the church. 

The days of the roving episcopacy are num- 
bered. If the resident bishop were instructed 
to visit each one of the churches in his area 
annually, the district superintendency could 
be immediately and safely abandoned. Such 
a bishop would not have to depend upon in- 
formation that had filtered through other 
minds. He would know the truth about 
preachers and churches unprejudiced by acci- 
dent, misconception, or design. This would 
be an ideal and inexpensive solution of the 
problem. Each church would look forward 
eagerly to the annual visit, and each bishop 
would be held continuously to a definite task. 

Poor Material Selected for the Office 

Serious objection is sometimes made to the 
men appointed to or continued in the office. 
Episcopal favorites are given the position 
against the wishes of both people and preach- 
ers ; men who have failed in the pastorate are 
put into the superintendency rather than al- 

33 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

lowed to "drop"; every General Conference 
sets afloat a certain amount of ecclesiastical 
flotsam and jetsam which finds a safe harbor 
in the superintendence ; aged men, who mean 
to step from the superintendence" into retire- 
ment and who are, unconsciously to them- 
selves, "slowing up," are favored with the 
office; a bishop will occasionally (so it is 
said) accommodate a colleague or reciprocate 
a favor by appointing a man unfit or repug- 
nant to the membership of an Annual Confer- 
ence; influential laymen, by episcopal favor, 
pass the office around among their ministerial 
friends; designing ecclesiastical politicians, 
by obsequious fawning, find ready access to 
the superintendency ; indeed, the superin- 
tendency might be call'ed the "politician's per- 
quisite" ; when once in office, even though un- 
fitness may be quickly shown, there is no re- 
dress until the "term" has expired — a bishop 
and his successors must stand by the original 
mistake — even though it be six years long. 

Dying of Routine 

It is impossible to rescue the office from 
routine. So many printed questions to be an- 

34 



DEFECTS OP THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

swered, just so many yards of official red tape 
to be unwound. The office is dying of ennui. 

You cannot do the same thing, in the same 
way, at the same stated periods, in the same 
tone of voice for more than a century and a 
quarter and make it mean very much. The 
system has lost the spring, the elasticity, the 
inspiration of youth. 

The Quarterly Meeting, once a source of 
power, is now in age and feebleness extreme. 
Once the coming of the "elder" was an event 
eagerly anticipated. Now it is an incident 
about which the community is indifferent. 

It is only the occasional superintendent, so 
it is averred, who really seems to care about 
the local church. No athlete ever pressed 
more eagerly toward the goal than does he to- 
ward the end of the Quarterly Conference. 
There is no time for the leisurely discussion 
of great interests. He leaps lightly, in spite 
of his years, from question No. 14 to No. 26 
and drops a few more on the way to No. 35, 
closes his grip with a significant snap, be- 
stows a discursive smile on the hastily ad- 
journed Conference, and is gone. A few 
months later he will come again on the last 

35 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

train, race through the same questions, and 
sprint to catch the limited home. 

No Supervision of the Superintendent 

It is said that many superintendents are 
overpaid and underworked; their ecclesias- 
tical superior is far away and does not know 
whether they are dawdling, droning, or dar- 
ing; they are for the most part men who have 
reached that time in life when they must take 
care of themselves, hence they shy at extra ex- 
ertion, reduce their labors to the minimum, 
move along the line of least resistance, pale at 
the thought of "starting something" ; their ad- 
ministration keeps a wary eye on the quadren- 
nial election ; indeed, they develop an aptitude 
for politics grievous to be seen. 

Destroys Ministerial Initiative 

The frequent appearance of the district 
superintendent destroys the independence and 
initiative of the average pastor. He is afraid 
the superintendent will consider him peculiar. 
He quickly becomes a copyist, a treater of 
threadbare subjects, a treader in well-worn 
paths ; the pioneering instinct soon dies. 

36 



DEFECTS OF THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

This is unfortunately true of young men, in 
the formative period of their ministry, when 
initiative should be most pronounced and per- 
sonality naturally seeks expression. They 
dread any criticism of manner, message, 
or methods that may reach the ear of the 
superintendent. They naturally go to the 
other extreme. They say what others have 
said and do what others have done. They 
cannot keep their eye off that fourth Quar- 
terly Conference or their attention from the 
great power wielded by the superintendent in 
the Cabinet. This gives us a uniform ministry, 
but at what a tremendous cost ! 

Too Much Power — Too Little Responsi- 
bility 

The superintendency, as now constituted, 
places too much power in the hands of men 
held to a lax accountability. This power may 
be wielded by men arbitrary in temperament 
and of mediocre ability. Ministers who leave 
our communion frequently give mistrust of 
the district superiutendency as the exciting 
cause. It irritates sensitive minds to know 
that their future is bound up so absolutely in 

37 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

the keeping of the judgment and conscience 
of one man. Their distress may be intensified 
by knowledge of his limitations, idiosyncrasies, 
antipathies, and partisan prejudices. 

Men who do not know how to fawn and will 
not stoop to flatter, and cannot be sycophantic 
without becoming foolish, are naturally at a 
disadvantage. They are very apt to seek the 
larger liberty and enjoy the freer exercise of 
their gifts in other communions. If they re- 
main with us, they often sink into lethargic 
indifference, misanthropic carelessness, or 
are covertly hostile to the ecclesiastical ma- 
chine in whose iron jaws they writhe help- 
lessly. It is impossible for these men to reach 
their maximum usefulness under such a 
system. 

The frequent and minute inspection of their 
work, the knowledge that all they say and do 
is heard and weighed by a superior officer of 
fallible judgment, irascible temper (possibly), 
well-known prejudices, and almost unlimited 
power over their future is a source of constant 
distress to timid but really capable men. 
Fretted and self-conscious, their powers of 
achievement are seriously curtailed. The 

38 



DEFECTS OF THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

Christian ministry, above all occupations, de- 
mands intellectual liberty, spiritual freedom, 
the right to think and dare unharassed by ec- 
clesiastical overlordship. 

Laity Hostile to the Office 

It is generally assumed that the laity, 
though no one can have accurate information, 
is either indifferent or hostile to the office of 
district superintendent. This hostility usually 
groups itself about four allegations: 

1. The cost of the system, making it a 
heavy burden upon many of the smaller, 
struggling churches. 

2. The arbitrary exercise of the functions 
of the office. The individual church, espe- 
cially the middle grade and smaller churches, 
has no protection against the hasty decision 
and has no court to which it can appeal from 
the unreasonable fiat of the superintendent. 
Many of the larger churches, in order to escape 
the power of the superintendency, negotiate 
directly with privately recommended or 
highly gifted ministers. 

3. The superintendent never forgets that 
he is a preacher, and is naturally partial to 

39 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

his own fraternity. First consideration is 
given to them. One is tempted to think that 
the appointments are often made from the 
standpoint of the preachers entirely. 

4. The men selected for the office are some- 
times inferior in intellect, pulpit ability, and 
that finesse of judgment which one might 
reasonably expect in such an administrator. 

A Suggested Substitute 

Each Annual Conference could elect a "Sta- 
tioning Committee" to help the bishop fix the 
appointments. This committee could be 
changed frequently and always selected from 
among the best qualified of the active minis- 
ters, representing the various sections of the 
Conference. These men, acquainted with 
churches and preachers, would be able to 
give the bishop all the information he really 
needed to arrange the work for the ensuing 
year. 

The members of the Stationing Committee 
could have small groups of churches assigned 
to them for oversight during the year, while 
still attending to their own pastoral duties. 
The cost of such administration would be re- 

40 



DEFECTS OF THE SUPERINTENDENCY 

duced to the minimum, at the same time con- 
serving all the interests of the work. 

Case Against the Superintendence Fairly 
Stated 

These are the reasons, so far as we have been 
able to recall them, usually urged against the 
district superintendency. We have endeav- 
ored to state them accurately and fully, in 
language as clear and convincing as we have 
been able to command. The omission of any 
material objection has been accidental. If 
any one has been poorly phrased or appears 
weaker than the reader thinks the facts war- 
rant, the errancy must be charged to dialecti- 
cal disability, not design. We hold no brief 
for or against the superintendency. Our quest 
is for facts. We seek "the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth." 



41 



CHAPTER III 
JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

Not a Technical Discussion 

We shall now consider the reasons gener- 
ally advanced for the retention of this office. 
It takes more than three pages of the Dis- 
cipline of 1912 to detail the duties of the dis- 
trict superintendent, but we will not weary 
you with a recital of these multitudinous 
tasks. We are not so much concerned with the 
things the district superintendent is told to 
do as we are with the things he does. 

How Does it Work? 

Not the elaborate framework of the Dis- 
cipline, but how does it work in actual prac- 
tice? Not the different tasks voted by the 
theorizers of a General Conference, but the 
realized possibilities of the office when con- 
centrated in one man, dealing with existing 

42 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

conditions, in living churches, on a real dis- 
trict, will be the object of our query. 

Method Pursued in the Discussion 

It will be noted at once that we do not file 
a seriatim brief in reply to the objections 
found in the previous chapter. It may be 
supposed that this course should have been 
pursued in order to avoid confusion or repeti- 
tion in the argument. Some may even deem 
this demanded by the gravity of the arguments 
cited against the superintendency. But we 
are not concerned about answering "objec- 
tions." It is immaterial to us whether the ob- 
jections enumerated are answered or not. It 
is not probable that all theoretical or valid 
objections to the superintendency have been 
tabulated. If we were to pursue these objec- 
tions round the earth and pummel them sorely 
every foot of the way, we should not succeed 
in settling the question of the actual value of 
the district superintendency. There is a much 
simpler and more direct way. Let us find just 
what the present day superintendency does 
for the churchy and then we shall know how 
much these objections are really worth! 

43 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

We are very far from claiming impecca- 
bility for the district superintendency. Few 
systems, sciences, or arts are perfect — except 
in the conceit of their originators or purblind 
devotees. There are lots of perfect people in 
the world — if we exclude the testimony of 
their neighbors! We fear that something bad 
can be said, and with some truth, about the 
best of us. But systems, sciences, and arts 
cannot be discarded because of incidental im- 
perfections. The race would perish while 
waiting for the impossible. All delinquents 
cannot be held in duress — it would be intoler- 
ably lonesome for the rest of us! There- 
fore it is not in the least alarming that 
critical minds should allege serious defects 
against such an unusual system of ministerial 
oversight as the district superintendency. 
After all, we are very much like some of the 
lower orders — anything different creates sus- 
picion. The superintendency is different and 
does have defects. We are proud of the former 
and not especially ashamed of the latter. 
The greatness of the church has grown out of 
the difference ; and as for the defects, they are 
common to all life and inherent in every sys- 

44 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

tern. However well a system may work, a 
treatise can always be written on "Why It 
Should Be Done Some Other Way." And al- 
ways the effectual answer is, "How well does 
the present method do it?" Along this path 
we shall walk. 

No Evasion Attempted 

It is not that we consider these objections 
unanswerable, or desire, in a circuitous verbal 
perambulation, to avoid their force. We are 
thoroughly convinced that the justification for 
the superintendency, if one exists, must be 
found in the actual, undisputed, incontro- 
vertible achievements of the office. It is not 
our task to justify the superintendency or 
shield it from the onus of either false, ill- 
natured, or reasonable accusations, but to dis- 
cover whether, in results achieved, the super- 
intendency justifies itself. 

"By Their Works" the Only Proper Test 

We have always held that the final justifica- 
tion for the itinerancy, involving, as it does, 
the subordination of church and ministry to 

45 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

ecclesiastical officers, must be sought in its 
results. The itinerancy, as the world knows 
it, is a theoretical impossibility. If it were 
not in existence, no one would believe it a pos- 
sibility. It would not take a very brilliant 
logician to show that church and ministry 
would never submit to its exactions. But 
they do. And it is not a case of submission 
on the part of the church or of subordination 
on the part of the ministry — they both believe 
in the system and would not exchange it for 
any other under the stars. But it is not a sys- 
tem that a denomination, already organized, 
with churches and congregations throughout 
a large section of the country, could ever 
adopt. The system and denomination must 
originate contemporaneously. Experience 
shows that the itinerancy works well for the 
churches and, in the final analysis, gives its 
ministry every necessary protection. Let the 
district superintendency be judged by the 
same standard. What does it do? How does 
it do it? Does it answer legitimate expecta- 
tions. If the superintendency cannot meet 
these tests, then so much the worse for the 
superintendency ! 

46 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

Not a Modern Innovation 
It is not a new office. Dr. Nathan Bangs 
tells us that "the origin of the presiding eld- 
er's office may be traced to the year 1785, 
though those who had charge of several cir- 
cuits were not so denominated in the minutes 
until the year 1789." 

The General Conference of 1784, which gave 
organic form to the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, did not specifically provide for the 
office of presiding elder, yet by declaring that 
only an elder could administer the sacraments 
and then ordaining but twelve men to the of- 
fice, it did create an immediate necessity for 
the eldership. The very next year the office 
appears in the practice of the church, though 
it was not legally recognized until four years 
later. 

For one hundred and twenty-seven years 
the presiding eldership, and later the district 
superintendency, has survived. Wherever the 
Methodist Episcopal Church has gone, to dis- 
tant lands, on far away continents, among 
alien peoples, you will always find the district 
superintendent. Counseling the preachers, in- 
specting the work and workers, exhorting the 

47 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

churches, encouraging the faint-hearted, re- 
trieving defeat, aligning the churches for a 
new advance, the superintendent has been at 
the forefront of the far-flung battle line of the 
Methodist Episcopal church for one hundred 
and twenty-seven long years. Evidently, the 
church has thought his mission worth while. 
The only changes made in the office during 
this long period have been to lengthen by two 
years the term, originally fixed at four years 
by the General Conference of 1792, and to 
make an interim of six years necessary be- 
fore reappointment to the same district. 

Surely, an office that has existed so long, 
that has resisted all attempts at modification 
or elimination, that has had detractors many 
and defamers not a few, must have justified 
itself continually in the eyes of world-wide 
Methodism. If the office has been useless or 
an incumbrance, the church has been guilty 
of gross carelessness in not proceeding sum- 
marily against it long since. The bishops, 
coming into such close contact with the super- 
intendency and depending upon it for infor- 
mation to remove or return nearly twenty 
thousand preachers annually, are among the 

48 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WOKKS 

best judges of the value of the office. If they 
have found it needless or negligible and have 
allowed it to continue without protest, their 
long silence has been criminal ! 

Right Hand of the Episcopacy 

The district superintendent is the executive 
officer of the episcopacy. What the shuttle 
is to warp and woof the district superin- 
tendency is to episcopacy and itinerancy, 
weaving them into a harmonious, enduring 
fabric. The bishop opens the throttle and is 
gone for a twelvemonth. The superintendent 
not only keeps his hand on that throttle, but 
his vigilant eye periodically inspects every 
part of the machinery. 

The bishop gives his ultimatum and catches 
the first Pullman. The superintendent sees 
that the episcopal decision is carried into ef- 
fect in every charge. The superintendent pre- 
pares the minds of the preachers for the com- 
ing decision, remains with them after it is 
made, converses with them freely about it in 
their homes, counsels patience and modera- 
tion to the aggrieved and rebellious, informs 
inquiring official boards why and how certain 

49 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

things were done, promises redress where a 
mistake has been made or unintentional in- 
jury inflicted. Of necessity, this work is not 
done to the accompaniment of blaring trum- 
pets and gets no recognition in the headlines 
of the metropolitan journals. But its annual 
achievement is absolutely indispensable to the 
existence of the itinerancy. It matters not 
how cautiously and prayerfully the work of 
the Cabinet may be done, it is not within the 
range of possibility to satisfy all the preach- 
ers or gratify all the churches. There always 
will be preachers that the churches do not 
want, and there will be churches to which the 
preachers will not wish to go. In addition, it 
is not always possible to properly place every 
worthy preacher or gratify the legitimate de- 
sire of every loyal church. The last meeting 
of the Cabinet is a heart-breaking affair. We 
do not think that any Cabinet has ever been 
satisfied with its work. It has been struggling 
to do the impossible, and when the time comes 
to give up the attempt — as it always does — 
self-gratulation is unthinkable. Did you ever 
study the faces of the bishop and superin- 
tendents as they file into the Conference from 

50 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

the last Cabinet meeting? Do it the next op- 
portunity you have. Notice how haggard is 
every countenance, seamed with deep lines of 
care; every brow is clouded with the sad 
memory of unsolved perplexities, while the 
stooping shoulders speak eloquently of bur- 
dens the eye may not see but which mind 
and heart cannot escape. The measured steps 
and downcast eyes, mementoes of sleepless 
nights and vain vigils, tell the story of what 
these men have suffered that others might be 
saved. Recall that sad little speech the 
bishop always makes, always has made and al- 
ways will make: "Brothers, the Cabinet has 
done its very best. We have tried to satisfy 
every church and please every preacher. We 
have failed, as all Cabinets before us have 
failed/' etc. Those words mean little to some 
in that audience and nothing at all to others. 
Congratulations, friend, full and hearty, if 
they have always been without significance to 
you! May your good fortune long continue! 
But please do not forget that to others of us 
they have been the mournful prelude of life's 
greatest tragedy. It was evening, and the sun 
was about to set on our highest hopes; the 

51 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

twilight was deepening, the curtain of night 
was to be drawn, and the bishop was getting 
us ready for the darkness ; whether God would 
hang out any stars to guide our stumbling feet 
through the night we did not know and were 
too confused to think or care much; whether 
it would ever be morning again — whether it 
ever could be morning again — we only knew 
that the knell was sounding and soon the blow 
would fall, and it fell! 

But what happens next? The bishop must 
leave the seat of the Conference immediately. 
Important engagements cannot be neglected. 
Day after to-morrow he must open another 
Annual Conference in a distant city. He can- 
not converse with every troubled preacher, 
and for him to visit every dissatisfied church 
is out of the question. It would take him 
months to get around ! In the economy of the 
church, his work in this Conference is finished 
for a year. A great emergency may bring him 
back for a brief visit. The whole machinery 
of administration is turned over to the district 
superintendent, who is fully acquainted with 
all the facts about every appointment. No 
dissatisfied church can make reckless charges 

52 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WOKKS 

or attempt drastic and foolish action. The 
disappointed preacher is not only similarly 
restrained but has the privilege of immediate 
and continued access to an official who not 
only knows why he was sent to that particular 
church, but why he could not go elsewhere. 
This service is inconspicuous but highly im- 
portant. Barely does a situation, however 
ominous, develop a tragedy. But it is the im- 
mediate and continuous presence of the dis- 
trict superintendent that prevents it. This is 
worth all the office costs. 

The superintendency vastly increases the ef- 
ficiency of the episcopacy. In all the long his- 
tory of the church has the abandonment of the 
superintendency or the serious curtailment of 
its functions ever been advocated by a single 
bishop? These men are in a position to judge 
accurately the exact value of the district 
superintendency. They are not swayed by 
prejudice or blinded by ignorance — the super- 
intendency can do nothing for them and keep 
nothing from them. They know the super- 
intendency from the inside — as the maker 
knows the watch. What has been their atti- 
tude toward this much-disputed office? A few 

53 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

years since a member of the present Board 
of Bishops had this to say of the superin- 
tendency: "Four fifths of the charges find it 
of great value all the time, and all of them 
some of the time, even in the administration 
of their local interests. " Another bishop de- 
clared : "This feature of our polity was needed 
at the outset, it has always been needed, for 
without it our church would never have grown 
as it has. It is needed as much now as ever in 
the past. It will be needed more and more as 
the millions of our members continue to mul- 
tiply." If a bishop, living or dead, has ever 
uttered a word, made a speech, written a sen- 
tence, printed a paragraph, or published a 
pamphlet against the superintendency, it has 
escaped our notice. These honored servants 
of the church realize how much, in the practi- 
cal administration of the principles of the 
itinerancy, they are dependent upon the dis- 
trict superintendency. The superintendency 
could not survive two quadrenniums if the 
bishops were simply indifferent to its con- 
tinuance, while a hostile episcopal pronun- 
ciamiento would blast the superintendency 
like a sirocco from the sands of Sahara. Why 

54 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

are the bishops to-day, what they have always 
been in the past, the friends of the office? 

Superintendents Make the Appointments 

The appointments as finally read in every 
Annual Conference, except where they have 
been previously negotiated, are largely the 
product of the knowledge and experience of 
the district superintendents. It could not be 
otherwise. 

No bishop, even with our present episcopal 
area, can have that intimate knowledge of 
men and churches which will make it safe for 
him to fix the appointments. Most of them 
would be in a "fix" if he were to attempt 
it. Unscrambling a modern trust would be 
child's play compared to the difficulties of the 
successor of such an episcopos! Occasionally 
a bishop with a large measure of self-reliance 
has finally dismissed the Cabinet and refixed 
the appointments. The ghastly wrecks that lie 
in the wake of such a cloud-burst long warn 
overventuresome pilots in those waters. Chaos 
ensues when the appointing power guesses at 
the facts. 

We do not mean to intimate that the 

55 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

presence of the bishop in the Cabinet is un- 
necessary. The Cabinet would be a hodge- 
podge of inchoate ideas and purposes without 
him. The bishop is the unprejudiced judge, 
the unbiased juror, the Supreme Court of 
Final Appeal. When there is a serious di- 
vision of opinion, the bishop listens to the dis- 
cussion, brings out the facts by pertinent ques- 
tions, and decides the issue upon its merits. 

But it must not be forgotten that his illu- 
mination comes from the superintendents. 
The bishop may know something about the 
church and much about the preacher under 
discussion. But there is not anything that 
the Cabinet ought to know about either that 
the superintendents do not know about both. 
The superintendents are personally ac- 
quainted with the leading laymen in every 
charge; they know the social conditions and 
intellectual atmosphere in each church; they 
have counted the spiritual pulse of every ap- 
pointment; they know the limitations and 
possibilities of every field; they have first- 
hand information from actual contact — why 
should they not be able properly to represent 
the churches? The superintendents know 

56 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

their preachers. What they have not seen 
with their eyes they have heard with their 
ears. They are acquainted with the family in 
the parsonage, the peculiarities of wife and 
children. They know whether the preacher 
is a worker or a shirker, a dunce, a dullard 
or a battery of splendid energies. They may 
not know much about forecasting the weather 
— neither does the almanac man — but they 
can write the history of every appointment 
before it is made. Is not the advice of such 
men invaluable to the bishop? The moment 
an appointment is suggested the superin- 
tendents can give a dozen unanswerable rea- 
sons why it should or should not be made. 
No bishop can have such information, under 
existing circumstances. Moreover, the super- 
intendents can usually tell at once if a sug- 
gested appointment is possible as well as de- 
sirable — knowledge which they could not 
have if they were not wholly devoted to one 
task. 

Episcopal Area Does Not Solve the Problem 

It might be argued that tethering the bishop 
to a string has made it possible for him to dis- 

57 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

pense with the services of the district super- 
intendent. But, men and brethren, the tether 
is still too long. How long will it take the 
resident bishop of this area (the Phila- 
delphia) to become acquainted with his thou- 
sand preachers, know the thousand charges 
by name, or personally know the official mem- 
bers of three thousand appointments? How 
long will it take him to sense the atmosphere 
of each community — its racial composition, 
religious history, moral tendencies, intellec- 
tual strivings, commercial possibilities, in- 
dustrial activities, local strifes, family feuds, 
and political alignments? — all of which is 
necessary if he is to make the appointments 
"out of his own head." If that were the policy 
of the church, the bishops would have to be 
elected to office when graduating from the 
primary school and kept in one "area" for 
life! 

Under the present system the bishop may 
become fairly well acquainted with a small 
section of his territory — the fortunate com- 
munity in which he resides. But this is only 
a fragment. He is still a stranger to seven 
tenths of his preachers and nine tenths of his 

58 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

churches. The present efficient administra- 
tion could not be maintained unless we had as 
many bishops as we now have superintend- 
ents. Who could wish such a situation? The 
church would stand aghast at the thought. 

As soon as the appointments are read the 
superintendents are ready for the field. They 
go at once to the churches that need them and 
that need them the most. Their intimate 
knowledge of every situation tells them where 
they ought to go, and, what is just as import- 
ant, where they should let . several moons 
"wax and wane" before going! 

Even if the episcopal area were reduced to 
a single Conference, it would require at least 
four years of slavish labor on the part of the 
incumbent to acquire that knowledge of his 
men, churches, and communities which the 
average district superintendent has the first 
hour of his appointment. If the superin- 
tendent is not a native of that section, he has 
been a member of the Conference many years. 
The bishop, in all likelihood, hails from afar, 
and his peculiar position makes it difficult for 
him to acquire that personal knowledge which 
the superintendent has been absorbing 

59 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

gradually and naturally through years of in- 
timate association with men and communities. 

superintendency in touch wlth "men in 
the Trenches/' 

If we are to have ecclesiastical overseers 
with authority to visit our parishes three or 
four times every year, converse with the peo- 
ple, and ask questions that penetrate to the 
very bone and marrow of our work, and if 
our present status and future well-being are 
to be largely determined by the impressions 
and information thus gathered, we would 
rather have men who were taken from the 
ranks yesterday and with whom we may ex- 
change places to-morrow. They are bone of 
our bone and flesh of our flesh. The yoke we 
now wear was recently about their necks. 
They were beaten with our stripes; they were 
chastised with our fears; they were haunted 
with our dreads; they were tempted, bur- 
dened, and affrighted as we are. There is a 
subtle comradeship between us. We know 
that they know and are satisfied that they will 
do their best. There could not be that large 
measure of acquiescence with the appoint- 

60 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

nients if they were not the work of men with 
whom we live on terms of equality. 

Ignoring the Superintendency Not Com- 
mon 

Only a small proportion of our churches at- 
tempt to dispense with the services of the dis- 
trict superintendent when a change of pastors 
is contemplated. This is not a new manifesta- 
tion, and does not seem to be increasing very 
rapidly, except in a few congested centers. 
There is documentary evidence that it was 
done in the very beginning of our history. 
The "inviting" and "accepting" is frequently 
done by the church and pastor; the "suggest- 
ing" and "directing" is generally done by the 
superintendent. This is frequently the case 
where the world thinks the superintendent 
has been "ignored." 

Calling a pastor in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church is the minor premise; making it pos- 
sible for him to come is the major premise. 
We have known bishops and superintendents 
to work for months trying to make it pos- 
sible for an arbitrary church to have its way 
or that an imperiled pastor might be saved. 

61 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

If the few churches that attempt to find 
their own pastors make so much confusion, 
what a bedlam we should have if all the 
churches had to do it! How long Avould the 
multitude of struggling village churches and 
the multiplied thousands of fragile rural ap- 
pointments survive if they were subjected to 
the errors and terrors of hearing candidates 
and calling pastors? 

Rural Churches and the Superintendency 

Village and rural work would be seriously 
handicapped without the district superin- 
tendency. Our churches are not only found 
on the broad thoroughfares of great cities but 
dot the landscape everywhere throughout this 
great republic. The propulsive power of a con- 
quering faith speaking through a magnificent 
ecclesiastical system gave us these churches. 

No single part of our efficient economy is 
entirely responsible for the ensign of Metho- 
dism that greets the eye of the traveler every- 
where throughout the American States. 
Bishops, pastors, and superintendents have 
helped to found this spiritual empire. A loyal 

62 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

and enthusiastic laity has eagerly cooperated. 
But this intricate network of rural churches 
could never have been organized and could 
not now be maintained if it were not for the 
district superintendence". It is a suggestive 
fact that this is the only church that bids 
fair to survive the startling changes that have 
overtaken rural life in many sections of the 
nation during the past twenty-five years. 

Other denominations have lost scores of 
churches. They have not been able to survive 
isolation, a waning population, and the lack 
of frequent, authoritative oversight. The 
superintendent keeps pastors in these distant 
fields, inspects their work, commends, en- 
courages, or corrects as occasion may demand. 
The other Protestant denominations recog- 
nize the efficiency of this system and some of 
them have attempted feeble imitations. We 
must not act hastily when the interests of the 
little church across the hills or far over the 
prairie are likely to be jeopardized. 

Unfortunately, the recruits for our great 
city churches do not seem to come so much 
from the congested populations swarming at 
their doors. They are the countrymen from 

63 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

the regions of the open sky. Woe betide this 
nation when the little rivulets of population 
coming down from the hillsides and through 
the valleys and across the plains to the great 
centers no longer bear the image and super- 
scription of the Christian Church ! 

Superintendence Judged by False 
Standards 

The district superintendent is generally 
measured with the wrong yard-stick. His im- 
portance is determined, in the mind of the 
average Methodist, by his pulpit ability. 
"Why pay this man to preach? We would 
rather hear our own pastor," is not an infre- 
quent complaint, as though preaching were 
what they paid him for. 

In the long, long ago — just how long we do 
not know, but it must have been in the long, 
long ago — it was customary, so the legend 
runs, to select great preachers for the dis- 
tricts : splendid men whose sonorous voices 
and impassioned rhetoric swayed great audi- 
ences, whose fame spread terror in the camp 
of the antinomians, whose pitiless logic left a 
dismayed opposition trembling at the door of 

64 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

judgment, who were wont to impale guilty 
consciences with the unerring javelins of 
truth ; whose coming into the community was 
eagerly awaited and whose going was keenly 
regretted. 

Is this all truth or all fancy? Probably 
neither, but an admixture of both. The super- 
intendent was the exceptional man in that 
elder day. In ability he often stood head and 
shoulders above his confreres. But to-day the 
church has thousands of exceptional men in 
her ministry, while the general average in 
intelligence and ability was never so high. 
The superintendent is simply one among many 
equals. However, could he always preach like 
a Boanerges, it would be unfair to measure 
the value of his office by this standard. The 
superintendent is incidentally a preacher, 
primarily an administrator. If his primary 
duties could be made more spectacular and 
his incidental duties less conspicuous, all dis- 
cussion of his value would cease. 

The Superintendency Vitalizes Legislation 

The superintendent is not only the execu- 
tive officer of the episcopacy but the executive 

65 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

officer of the General Conference. It is his 
business to vitalize the decisions of the Gen- 
eral Conference in so far as they deal with the 
life and work of the local church, throughout 
his district, however revolutionary they may 
appear. The superintendent is the "enacting 
clause" whether the new law comes from the 
General or Annual Conference. 

How many of our churches would render 
even measurable obedience to the requirements 
of the Discipline if it were left entirely in 
their hands? Most of them would never know 
what the requirements were, and those who 
did would consult their own convenience 
about obeying. Do you realize that the Gen- 
eral Conference sends a special officer into 
every church three or four times every year 
to see that the Discipline is obeyed? The 
observance of the law is not left to the dis- 
cretion of the local church. The district super- 
intendent is the enacting clause. If it were 
not for the district superintendency, much of 
the church would be from twenty-five to fifty 
years behind the present Discipline. The 
superintendent calls attention to these 
changes, tells why and how they have come, 

66 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

points out the alleged benefits, and secures 
acquiescence. 

The church-wide establishment of the Ep- 
worth League in the face of a widespread and 
popular undenominational society is an illus- 
tration. Is a new benevolence introduced or 
a new financial system to be established, a 
paper to be circulated, an endowment to be 
raised? The responsibility is passed over to 
the superintendent. If there is serious trouble 
in any church because of alleged ministerial 
misbehavior, or the refusal of a congregation 
to receive its pastor, or serious dissension from 
whatever cause, an ecclesiastical officer clothed 
with authority is instantly at hand. Recreant 
ministers have often returned their parch- 
ments and have been dismissed from their 
charges before the public has had an intima- 
tion of trouble. 

One who has not occupied this office can 
have no conception of the differences adjusted 
and wrinkles ironed out by the superintendent 
during a single year. Most of this work, be- 
cause of its very nature, the world never 
knows anything about. If it were not for the 
accessibility of the superintendent, we should 

67 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

much oftener be scandalized in the public 
prints. 

Limitless Pastorate Demands 
Superintendence 

It might be assumed that the lengthening 
pastorate, enabling a more leisurely ad- 
justment of the appointments, would help 
to dispense with the services of the district 
superintendent. 

Are we justified in saying that no clergy- 
men in Christendom work under such high 
tension as Methodist Episcopal ministers? The 
genius of the organization makes it impossible 
for them to sit down and make themselves 
comfortable. The very atmosphere they 
breathe is electric with the memory of great 
men and deeds, whose prowess they may ad- 
mire but whose deeds they must parallel. The 
motto of the denomination is not "Hold 
the fort," but "Onward, Christian soldiers! 
marching as to war." We may build forts and 
dig trenches, but they are never for the per- 
manent occupancy of all the forces. It is our 
business to find the foe and conquer him in 
the name of the Great King. We never grow 

68 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

exultant over "holding our own." The whole 
system is built for continuous offensive war- 
fare. It is no cause for felicitation when the 
enemy fails to attack. We must make him 
fight or surrender. We do not believe in 
truces and never establish "neutral zones." 

The restless activity which this system en- 
courages makes a complaisant ministry and 
an indifferent church impossible. Under these 
circumstances pastorates of indefinite length, 
except in isolated cases, are rare. Our preach- 
ers work under high pressure. They are inde- 
fatigable pastors, earnest students, notable 
financiers, flaming evangelists. O the toil, the 
weariness, the heartache, the soul agony put 
into the annual evangelistic effort ! O the long 
preparation, the nervous tension, the inevit- 
able reaction! None can understand save 
those who have wept under the branches of 
this olive tree. Indefinite pastorates for these 
men are impossible. They need not change 
frequently, but they must change occasionally. 

The reputation of the denomination, the 
advanced deliverances of the General Confer- 
ence upon the moral and economic questions 
agitating the public mind, and the invariable 

69 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

habit of the ministers of the Methodist Epis- 
copal church to array themselves against 
social extravagances, political corruption, and 
community evils make every Methodist 
preacher the radical Protestant pastor of his 
community. It matters not what others may 
do, he is expected to do his duty; however 
feeble the right, he must be its champion; no 
matter how dominating the allied forces of 
evil, he must challenge them to mortal combat. 
He cannot wait for a vigorous sentiment 
against Sabbath desecration, the infamous 
liquor traffic, the brazen and malignant social 
evil, political corruption in high places, and 
gambling in its multifarious forms — he must 
blaze the way through the wilderness of in- 
difference, acquiescence, and organized wrong- 
doing. His radicalism naturally brings him 
into quick conflict with certain elements — 
not infrequently the ruling elements — of the 
community. 

Such a ministry may be glorious in achieve- 
ment, but it cannot always be long in dura- 
tion. If the church did not have an efficient 
system for the rapid transposition of her 
ministers, this splendid moral leadership 

70 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

would soon be lost. The spirit of the denom- 
ination is well typified in a ringing declaration 
that one of the bishops nsed to make in every 
Annual Conference over which he presided: 
"Every community should know that when a 
Methodist preacher comes to town, whether 
he arrives on foot, on horseback, in a carriage, 
a Pullman coach, on a bicycle, or by automo- 
bile, an unrelenting foe of the legalized liquor 
traffic has arrived." That sentiment was al- 
ways cheered to the echo. When the white 
flag of prohibition waves from the dome of the 
national Capitol at Washington, a grateful 
nation will bless the memory of the itinerant 
heroes whose clarion voices aroused the public 
conscience. But it must not be forgotten that 
the protecting arm of the superintendency has 
made this leadership possible. 

Moreover, the Methodist preacher is a 
radical within the borders of his own com- 
munion. He must be intolerant of the follies 
and foibles of his own people. Some of them 
will think the denominational standards pro- 
vokingly and impossibly high. He will hear 
these standards derided and see them ignored. 
No matter, he must stand for the law as it is. 

71 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

He very generally does his duty, even though 
he loses the friendship and support of the 
most influential members of his church. It 
would be a world tragedy if the Methodist 
preacher everywhere found it necessary to be- 
come a "trimmer." If he had to wait for 
"calls" and "invitations" ; if he were abso- 
lutely under the control of a local, rum- 
sympathizing, gaiety-loving constituency, that 
splendid moral leadership which makes him 
a marked man the world over would be gone. 
The laity of the church have caught this 
spirit of radicalism from the ministry. They 
are never content to let the church drift year 
after year. They cannot be satisfied with the 
memory of what their pastor once was or once 
was able to do. They want something clone 
now. He must lead them to victory or be led 
to the stake. We would not have it otherwise. 
The Methodists brought system and energy 
into religious life and work. The system we 
have, the energy we must not lose. The system 
is mechanical and can be easily preserved; 
the energy is spiritual and may die with the 
passing generation. It is right for the laity to 
insist upon a high standard of intellectual 

72 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

virility, moral earnestness, and spiritual effi- 
ciency in the ministry. 

The removal of the time limit from the pas- 
torate has not caused a ripple upon the surface 
of our ecclesiastical life. Pastors come and go 
just as frequently, perhaps more so, than 
formerly. Those who feared that each church 
would find a gifted preacher and enthrone him 
for life, and those who insisted that the 
itinerancy would be destroyed by sundry 
ecclesiastics permanently ensconced in "ceiled 
houses" have turned out to be poor prophets. 
Indeed, the removal of the time limit has in- 
creased rather than diminished the work of 
the Cabinet. 

Young Preachers Need the Superintendent 

A larger proportion of partially or thor- 
oughly prepared young men are knocking at 
the doors of the Annual Conferences than 
ever before. But we still have a considerable 
percentage of men, young and middle-aged, 
called from the store, the shop, the plow, into 
the work of the Christian ministry. They need 
the fellowship and counsel of the district 
superintendent. 

73 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

The problems of the ministry are so imme- 
diate, amazingly intricate, and transcendently 
important the very moment one enters the 
active work that even the best equipped are 
confused and know not how to proceed. Many 
a vaunting young theologue or self-satisfied 
graduate has found the sympathy and counsel 
of the superintendent a ready refuge. And it 
is a comfort to know that there is one whose 
business it is to listen sympathetically to our 
troubles. 

Benevolences Promoted by the 
Superintendence 

The district superintendency has always 
earnestly and systematically promoted the 
benevolent enterprises of the church. Its serv- 
ice in this particular has been notable and is 
of surpassing value to-day. The churches 
are much more inclined to respond to these 
appeals than ever before. The church to-day 
has a keen sense of obligation and privilege. 
Large credit for this sympathetic attitude to- 
ward the benevolences belongs to the district 
superintendency. 

The superintendent is the logical leader in 

74 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

all these great movements. He has access to 
all the churches. He is the one man who can 
rally the preachers and reach the laity of his 
district. The secretaries who have charge of 
these interests try to influence the preachers 
through him. They know that the ministry 
and laity of the district will listen to the 
superintendent when they will not heed any 
other voice. 

Superintendent Unbiased Mediary in 
Trouble 

If a disagreement arises between pastor and 
people, the superintendent lays the exact facts 
before the bishop without prejudice or favor 
to either party. The pastor very naturally 
gives his version, and it is perfectly natural 
for those who represent the people to give 
their version. A neighboring pastor, if very 
near, will probably be a partisan; and if not 
living very near, he will not be sufficiently 
acquainted with the facts to present them to 
the bishop. The superintendent is in a posi- 
tion to learn the truth. He is deeply inter- 
ested in both pastor and church. He knows 
that he must present the case to the bishop. 

75 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

He also knows that he must bear, in large 
measure, responsibility for whatever action is 
taken. He has every facility for discovering 
the facts and every incentive to be an accurate 
reporter. His Brother, the church, and his 
own well-being urge him to strict justice in 
preparing and presenting the case to his 
superior. 

The Church Has an Accessible Official 
in Emergencies 

The district superintendency gives us an 
official representative, present and easily ac- 
cessible, in every portion of our territory, not 
occasionally and accidentally but perpetually 
and designedly. Men and churches turn to 
him naturally and quickly whenever neces- 
sary. In the absence of the resident bishop 
he may change the preachers. He can tell 
young men looking toward the ministry if 
there is an opening or how soon a vacancy 
will be likely to occur. If a great reform 
movement is to be launched, or a vigorous re- 
sistance to pending vicious legislation organ- 
ized, he is the natural leader of his men and 
churches. Freed from the absorbing and in- 

76 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

sistent obligations of a parish, he has time 
and strength to answer such calls as properly 
come to him. 

The Superintendence and Denominational 
Extension 

The emigrant has hardly disappeared over 
the hills or across the prairie before the dis- 
trict superintendent starts the church on his 
trail. He does not wait for communities to 
organize churches and send for preachers. He 
sends preachers to gather congregations and 
build churches. Other denominations are 
largely helpless until the initiatory steps have 
been taken by the local community. The 
superintendent takes the initiative, and this 
fact has meant the early and continuous occu- 
pancy of our vast field. Other denominations 
may come in later. The world expects the 
Methodist Episcopalians to be there when the 
first prairie "schooner" is unpacked or the first 
"dugout" pulls up to the bank. The superin- 
tendency has always made this possible. 

The superintendent is a careful student of 
the drifting urban population. No large 
church is ever quite willing to give a part of 

77 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

her constituency as the nucleus for a new 
organization. She desires to put off the evil 
day as long as possible. The superintendent 
has the larger vision. He knows when the 
time has come to put down the stakes in a 
growing section of the city. Have you ever 
wondered how we manage to keep pace with 
the shifting population of a great city? Every 
"new addition" to the city means a new Meth- 
odist Episcopal church. This is so universally 
true that the exception occasions surprise. 
The evening star shines no more serenely and 
securely above the world when the day's work 
is done than does a new Methodist Episcopal 
church stand on the most eligible corner to 
greet the "suburbanite" with a friendly smile 
and cordial handshake. But how does it hap- 
pen? Ah, that is another story. It does not 
happen. The "eyes and ears" of the episco- 
pacy, the "hands and feet" of the itinerancy — 
the district superintendency — put it there. 
The great church one or two miles away was 
not enthusiastic about the enterprise. She 
wanted to wait a few years longer. The pros- 
pective loss of supporters faulted her judg- 
ment. But the district superintendent had 

78 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

the power, unhampered by red tape, unhin- 
dered by extraneous "consents." 

SUPERINTENDENCY "SPEEDS Up" THE MINISTRY 

The ministry is the most peculiar of all 
callings. It is the last occupation for a lazy 
man, and yet, we regret to say, it presents 
unusual opportunities for the cultivation of 
lazy habits. The minister does not have to 
report at a shop or office at a certain hour 
every morning. He does not work all day 
under the eye of a vigilant foreman. It is 
not necessary for him to turn out a fixed 
amount of finished product daily to hold his 
job. He is not forced to keep steadily at his 
task until the whistle blows or bell rings. He 
can begin any time or no time; anywhere or 
nowhere ; stop five minutes before midnight or 
ten minutes after he starts. His workshop is 
in his own home. The general public will 
not know whether he is in there or not — until 
next Sunday. The first day of the week al- 
ways shows how the six previous days have 
been spent. But that does not change the fact 
that all of them may have been misspent! 

The district superintendent is not a task- 

79 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

master. Neither can he be an always-present 
spur to the late riser, the early retirer, the 
daily dozer. But he is there often enough to 
know about how much work is done in that 
study and how well those particular acres are 
cultivated. The superintendent is the "official 
investigator" of the church, the only one in 
Protestantism and the best informed as to 
local conditions in Christendom. Even the 
most indolently inclined preacher knows that 
his work will be officially reviewed every few 
months; that embarrassing questions will be 
asked and incriminating answers written 
down. And he knows that these questions 
will be asked and answers recorded by the 
very man who has more to say in the majority 
of cases about his immediate future than any 
living mortal. 

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, 

Who never to himself hath said — 

"All of which makes 'some'' difference!" 

But the preacher does not always need 
"speeding up." He often must be quieted, 
calmed, encouraged. The mental strain, the 
nervous tension needs relaxation. His work, 
especially when serious difficulties are encoun- 

80 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

tered, makes him fretful, moody, despondent. 
His public position makes him a shining mark 
for critics ; "his own people" are thoughtlessly 
exacting and demand attentions and services 
beyond his time or strength; a few nagging 
fault-finders keep his nerves on edge all the 
while; the idle and vicious eagerly transform 
gossip into serious accusations. Indeed, it is 
often a depressed or discouraged pastor that 
the superintendent finds in the parsonage. 
His heart needs to be cheered for the battle. 
The pastor may find himself facing a stone 
wall, and the wise counsels of his superior 
officer show him the way through, over or 
around. There may be a misunderstanding 
between pastor and people, and the visit of 
the superintendent clears away the mist and 
lets in the sunshine. A quiet word of caution 
to the preacher may save him from a serious 
blunder in administration or a foolish breach 
in etiquette that would impair his usefulness. 

Routine, but Important 

Among the really serious objections to the 
district superintendency is its tiresome routine 
— so many visits and so many questions, 

81 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

repeated over and over! But if we are going 
to abolish routine, why start here? Life's 
daily and most important duties are tire- 
somely routine. Why not fulminate against 
them? We must do the same things over day 
after day. Why? Because they are the things 
we must do in order to live. It is not a ques- 
tion of growing hilarious over them or finding 
keen delight in their performance or waiting 
for inspiration to go at them; they must be 
done. How much of "must" there is in life 
for all of us! — things we have to do and will 
have to keep on doing whether we wish to 
or not. 

We say of a great mercantile establishment 
or manufacturing plant, "Everything moves 
like clockwork," which is equivalent to saying 
that "everything moves by routine." The 
clock is a routine affair, but it gets a lot of 
work done; as a free-lance — starting when it 
liked and stopping when it pleased — it would 
not be a great success. The Quarterly Con- 
ference is tied to routine, but how important 
is that routine ! The General Conference may 
be more spectacular, the Annual Conference 
more interesting, but the Quarterly Confer- 

82 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

ence, frequently neglected and even despised, 
is more important than either of them! It 
is the continued efficiency of the Quarterly 
Conference that makes the General and 
Annual Conference possible and worth while. 

The Quarterly Conference has supreme 
jurisdiction over the local church. There all 
the activities of the individual church center. 
The Quarterly Conference not only plans the 
work for the year but receives reports of its 
progress at stated intervals, and a final re- 
view as the year draws to a close. The ques- 
tions asked by the superintendent, upon the 
authority of the Discipline, search out every 
nook and cranny of the church's life. Every 
society in the church must have its officers 
confirmed, its records examined, its accounts 
audited, and work inspected by the Quarterly 
Conference. 

The pastor gives a written report of his 
work. He can write whatsoever he listeth. 
He is not limited to time or facts. But the 
Discipline is not satisfied. It begins to ask 
him the most personal and pertinent questions. 
"Have you a visiting list?" "Have you read 
the General Rules?" "Are your records prop- 

83 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

erly kept?" "Is your Sunday school supplied 
with the literature of the church?" "Is it 
organized into a missionary society? a tem- 
perance society?" "Have you taken the col- 
lection for" — the want of space forbids the 
enumeration of all these "causes." The 
preacher may be tempted to wish some of them 
in the depths of the deep blue sea; no matter, 
he must answer: "Have the rules for the in- 
struction of children been observed?" "Have 
the directions of the Discipline for the sup- 
port of Conference claimants been carried out 
and the pro rata division made?" "Have the 
questions prescribed in Paragraph 432, Sec- 
tion 2, been asked and answered?" How 
would you like to be stood against the wall 
four times each year and, in the presence 
of many well-informed witnesses, have the 
most searching questions concerning the con- 
duct of your business shot at you? That is 
what the Quarterly Conference means to 
every preacher in Methodism. Do you say that 
is unimportant? We are tempted to reply, 
"Your answer shows that you are unin- 
formed." 
Every preacher in Methodism, bishops in- 
84 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

eluded, was once a local preacher. Local 
preachers are examined, licensed, and their 
licenses renewed by the Quarterly Conference. 
The Annual Conference can receive only such 
candidates as have been recommended by the 
Quarterly Conference. The ministry begins 
in the Quarterly Conference! This body not 
only decides who shall enter the local minis- 
try, but determines who shall have the privi- 
lege of joining an Annual Conference. The 
Annual Conference is helpless until the Quar- 
terly Conference takes action. Inducting a 
timid candidate into the office of the local 
ministry may not attract much notice, but it 
is of inestimable importance to the church. 

Of course, if it is questions only that the 
church is interested in, a phonograph might 
be sent around the district. It would be less 
expensive and just as accurate, if it is all to 
begin and end with certain questions. But we 
have heard that the man behind the gun counts 
for much. In this case the man behind the 
question counts for everything. He is more 
than an interrogation point. The peculiar 
power vested in his office gives a subtle sig- 
nificance to every question. Decisions that 

85 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

vitally affect the wellbeing of the church 
throughout the world grow out of the answers 
recorded in the Quarterly Conference. Start- 
ling changes that would jeopardize the very 
existence of the denomination if based upon 
insufficient or inaccurate data, are the con- 
stant outgrowth of this searching investiga- 
tion. 

Have you not marveled at the orderly prose- 
cution of the work of this great denomination? 
Churches everywhere, among all classes of 
society, in all possible locations, differing in 
size and strength "as one star differeth from 
another," but all moving serenely in one direc- 
tion; bills paid; credit good; property re- 
paired, painted, insured, and used; societies 
organized, officered, and working; children 
taught, youths converted, sinners reclaimed; 
never any confusion in the ranks ; no stopping 
of machinery for repairs ; no idling at the dock 
while a committee searches for a new Captain ; 
no sea is too deep, no mountain too steep, no 
prairie too broad, no horizon too far ; no popu- 
lation too alien, no race too foreign or far, no 
atmosphere too hostile, no creed too invulner- 
able — everywhere the workers go and always 

86 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

the work goes! The penetration, pertinacity 
and efficiency of the system — is it not sublime? 
O, it must make the angels strike their golden 
harps with exultant fingers and raise their 
highest notes of triumph ! 

But it is the "weary routine," the "monot- 
onously repeated questions," of the Quarterly 
Conference; the "formal visits," the "iterated 
inquiry into uninteresting details" by the dis- 
trict superintendent that make the harmonious 
cooperation of all the parts of this intricate 
mechanism a continuous possibility. There is 
no maladjustment of the parts, no crunching 
of the bearings, no rust eating like a canker 
into the vitals, no creaking from non-lubrica- 
tion, no laborious and dangerous cranking to 
get started, no failure of the brakes in an 
emergency. And it is all due to that expert 
mechanic, the Quarterly Conference, whose 
skillful hand and practiced eye, periodically 
looks it over, takes it apart, cleans the bear- 
ings, adjusts the parts, tightens a nut here 
and eases the friction yonder, and pronounces 
it fit for the road again ! 

It would be a serious mistake to assume that 
the Quarterly Conference is always occupied 

87 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

with routine matters, however important. 
The superintendent is not free to omit any 
of the questions found in the Discipline, but 
he is at liberty to add such as he may deem 
warranted by the local situation. Any phase 
of the work of the local or general church 
can be brought to the attention of the Con- 
ference. How surprising are the results that 
frequently grow out of that quiet little con- 
versation that so frequently follows the con- 
clusion of the routine business! Churches 
have been built, new financial methods 
adopted, a new interest in the benevolences 
created, evangelistic zeal quickened, criticism 
allayed, rubbish heaps of discontent removed, 
threatening breaches healed by the heart-to- 
heart talk after question No. 39 is out of 
the way! 

Not in the Hands of Amateurs 

It cannot be denied that the duties of the 
superintendent are very grave in nature and 
pregnant with good or ill to the church. It 
would be impossible, in our judgment, to over- 
rate the ills that would follow in the wake of 

88 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

his discontinuance, or the attempted per- 
formance of his duties by amateurs, volunteers, 
or those who could give only a portion of 
their time to the task. 

The superintendent quickly becomes an ex- 
pert because he is in the field all the time. 
The district work is not a side issue, thought 
of occasionally, attended to accidentally when 
the time can be spared from his real work. 
This one thing he does. His "breaks" and 
"foozles" are made in the beginning before he 
knows his preachers or understands his 
churches. He soon learns how to pilot his 
ship through the Scylla and Charybdis 
that jut out somewhere in every Quarterly 
Conference. The most delicate interests of 
the church necessarily find their way into the 
Quarterly Conference. A tyro in the chair 
would be a perpetual menace. 

The appointments are not so much made 
at the Annual Conference as they are "in 
process of making" in the minds of the super- 
intendents throughout the year. They are 
mentally adjusting and readjusting the work 
all the while. No emergency finds them with- 
out a solution. These solutions are not "happy 

89 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

inspirations," but the result of long and con- 
tinued "mental perturbations." How could 
this work be so quickly and successfully done 
by a "stationing committee" elected at the 
Annual Conference? Even if this committee 
had held over since the last Conference, it 
would be composed of men who had been able 
to devote only a fraction of their time to the 
district work. The results could, therefore, 
show only a "fraction" of their present accep- 
tability. 

The districts traveled by these "local super- 
intendents" would have to be very small, very 
accessible, the visits very occasional and very 
brief. The men needed for these positions 
would have the least time to devote to the 
work. They could not be out of their own 
pulpits on the Sabbath day. There would be 
an increasing disposition to "take things for 
granted," especially with the struggling or 
out-of-the-way churches. 

Large and busy city churches need all the 
time of their pastors, and pay them for it. 
They would stoutly object to their pastors 
superintending districts, however small they 
might be, because of the time and strength it 

90 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

would take. A little money might be saved, 
but important interests would be jeopardized. 

Public Benefits 

The constant appearance of the superinten- 
dent in the pulpits of the district enables him 
to do a very important work for the general 
and local interests of the Kingdom. He can 
say many things that the people need to know ; 
things that the pastor, even if sufficiently in- 
formed and equipped, cannot very properly 
say. Just a word from him, circumspectly 
spoken, is frequently sufficient to cause a 
renovation of the house of God. He can em- 
phasize the great connectional interests of the 
church, show their importance, and urge their 
support. He can call attention to the finances 
in an inoffensive way; and tell how much 
better churches are doing where there are sys- 
tem and forethought. There is no reason why 
he should not speak clearly concerning the 
correct attitude of the church toward its 
pastor and what is to be gained by it. 

The district superintendent is the repre- 
sentative man of Methodism in new and feeble 
fields. The pastor is generally either a par- 

91 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

tially educated man or an inexperienced youth. 
Intelligent people in such communities get 
their ideas of Methodism from the quarterly 
visits of the district superintendent. His ser- 
mons, addresses, and fireside conversations 
meet the wants of the leading people and help 
to attract them to the church. At the very 
least, his presence helps to remove their 
prejudices against Methodism. 

Sensory and Motor System of the 
Itinerancy 

Just as the human body depends upon the 
sensory and motor nerves for its adjustment 
to and conquest of the external world, so the 
itinerancy is in large measure dependent 
upon the knowledge and power of the superin- 
tendency for the delicate adjustments that 
give this system its undeniable superiority. 

All over the surface of the human body is a 
delicate network of sensory nerves whose busi- 
ness it is to keep the brain instantly and ac- 
curately informed of external conditions. 
Sensations of heat, cold, hardness, softness are 
instantly transmitted to the brain. If one's 
sensory nerves were paralyzed, one's hand 

92 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

might be burned, the foot crushed, the ear 
frozen and the mind remain in dangerous 
ignorance. 

The motor nervous system is the logical and 
necessary complement of the sensory nervous 
system. If there were no motor nerves, the 
information conveyed to the brain by the 
sensory nerves would be largely unusable. In 
vain would the sensory nerves located in the 
hand telegraph the startling news to the brain 
that that member was being crushed under a 
sledge, mangled between rollers or incinerated 
in a flame, for the brain would have no agency 
for the transmission of orders to the muscles 
of the arm to withdraw the hand. But swifter 
than any lightning that ever shot athwart the 
sky the motor nerves convey an imperial edict 
from the mind, and the hand is withdrawn 
from the zone of danger. 

The district superintendency is the sensory 
and motor nervous system of the itinerancy. 
If there is trouble anywhere in the extremities 
of the district, information soon reaches the 
superintendent. He is generally cognizant of 
the situation before it becomes acute. A bad 
condition cannot slowly grow worse and the 

93 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

fact long be kept from him. Does a watchman 
sleep at his post? Is one set for the defense 
of the truth slowly undermining the founda- 
tions of the faith? Is there persistent flouting 
of discipline? Are there brazen doctrinal 
denials? Whatever may be the evil or peril, 
the sensory nervous system of the itinerancy — 
the superintendency — is aware of it. 

But the superintendent is the motor as well 
as the sensory nervous system of the itin- 
erancy. He not only has knowledge but power. 
He is free to deal with the local situation as 
his judgment dictates. His power, while not 
autocratic or subversive of the rights of others, 
can be immediately exercised. 

This is a great desideratum and one which 
has rescued us from many menacing perils. 
We are confident that if the inside history of a 
single incumbency of this office could be pub- 
lished to the world, the church would stand 
agape with astonishment and mortification be- 
cause of her ignorance and unappreciation of 
the district superintendency. 

A Scientific System 
If we were required to sum up our estimate 

94 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

of the ecclesiastical economy of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in one sentence, we should 
say this : "It leaves nothing to chance and takes 
nothing for granted." In one century and a 
quarter this economy has dotted the continent 
with contiguous churches. The word "con- 
tiguous" in this connection is most significant. 
There is not an occasional Methodist church 
or an accidental group of Methodist churches 
here and there, located by Methodist pioneers 
and now supported by their descendants. 
Other denominations are sectional, confined to 
localities ; this one is national. Other denom- 
inations come and go; this one comes but 
never goes. Other denominations are rent by 
doctrinal controversies or embarrassed by ad- 
ministrative hiatuses; this one is unrent by 
strife and unhindered by defective oversight. 
How does this happen? The question has been 
answered. The economy of the Methodist 
Episcopal church leaves nothing to chance and 
takes nothing for granted. 

If the present Discipline does not provide 
for every possible emergency that may arise 
in the administration of the affairs of the 
church in any part of the world, the next 

95 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

General Conference, to convene shortly, will 
supply the deficiency. Everything is organized 
and everybody is supervised! "Efficiency" 
was our watchword long before it became the 
nation's byword. Before economists prated 
about "organization" and "system" we had 
the most thoroughly organized ecclesiastical 
system the Protestant world has ever known. 
The administrative features of this economy 
are superb. It drops no stitches. It never 
limps. It knows what the last Methodist 
preacher is doing, how well he is doing, 
whether he might do better, and where. It 
knows the environment of each church, its 
constituency and prospects. It guesses at 
nothing and follows no will-o'-the-wisps. It 
never drifts, jumps the rails, or gets side- 
tracked. Steadily as the tides its great acti- 
vities ebb and flow. Relentlessly as time it 
moves forward, over the Atlantic, across the 
Pacific, traversing continents, penetrating to 
earth's "remotest bounds." And everywhere 
there are the same systematic thoroughness, 
patient attention to details, and organization 
of all available resources. It is theory hitched 
to practice, power geared to machinery, en- 

96 



JUSTIFIED BY ITS WORKS 

thusiasm reduced to system, and system set to 
music ! 

This intimate and exact knowledge of uni- 
versal conditions, this minute investigation 
and record of every church, this first-hand 
information of preachers and people so neces- 
sary in a system where every pastorate ter- 
minates annually, this authoritative oversight 
with its straight demand for facts, and pene- 
tration of subterfuges, this holding of a great 
organization to the original purpose, this 
annual realignment of all the forces for a new 
advance, would not be possible without the 
district superintendency. 



97 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ANNUAL APPOINTMENT OF DIS- 
TRICT SUPERINTENDENTS 

It is a striking testimony to the high esteem 
in which this office has always been held by 
the church that not only has every attempt 
at abolishment failed, but the General Con- 
ference has persistently refused to change the 
functions of the district superin tendency or 
allow the slightest impairment of its power. 

The church has not been inclined to make 
experiments with the episcopacy or the dis- 
trict superintendency. No one feature of our 
economy has escaped legislation so constantly 
as the method of district supervision. There 
has been no legislation inimical to the epis- 
copacy, but an earnest attempt has been made 
to hold these high officers to a stricter account- 
ing. This is precisely what should be done 
with the district superintendency. 

That the church has believed in this office 
its long survival proves. But why should the 
church be satisfied with the district superin- 

98 



ANNUAL APPOINTMENT 

tendency as it has been, any more than she 
should have been content with the itinerancy 
and episcopacy as they once were? Is it be- 
cause the other parts of our economy are more 
flexible, lending themselves readily to changes 
demanded by modern conditions; or, is it be- 
cause the district superintendency reached 
perfection at a single bound? The true answer 
is immaterial to this discussion. But we are 
profoundly convinced that the time has come 
for the adoption of certain fundamental 
changes in the selection, retention, and evalua- 
tion of district superintendents. Not of the 
superintendency, you will please note, but of 
superintendents ! 

The first change should be the one suggested 
by the title given to this chapter : the district 
superintendents should be put in the same 
class with pastors and appointed annually. 

"But," you will answer, "this is now the 
law of the church." It may be the law but it 
is not the practice. The Discipline does not 
say that a man is appointed for a "term" of 
six years, but he is nevertheless. The decrees 
of custom are often more imperious than are 
written laws. Custom implies a "term" ap- 

99 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

pointment of definite length, and this implica- 
tion has been raised, by the almost uniform 
practice of more than a century, to the dignity 
of unwritten law. 

While a bishop must remove a man at the 
end of the sixth year, he may remove him at 
the end of the first, second, third, fourth, or 
fifth year. But the mere fact that such a 
change would be considered a "removal" from 
office and not a natural change of appoint- 
ment, indicates that it will not be made unless 
the situation is extraordinary. Custom, 
crystallized into law by long repetition, de- 
crees that the superintendent be appointed 
for a "term" of six years. His reappointment 
annually is a mere formality, a necessary for- 
mality, but none the less a formality. For six 
years episcopal freedom of action is seriously 
hampered. 

The district superintendent, like the average 
time employee, has considerable respect for 
the clock. His respect would be greatly 
heightened if it struck annually instead of 
sexennially! An earthquake, death, a crow- 
bar or a clock that strikes once in six years — 
truly a gloomy prospect when a weak man or 

100 



ANNUAL APPOINTMENT 

the wrong man is appointed to this important 
position ! 

The superintendent may be like a mechan- 
ical toy, squeaking stereotyped questions, a 
mumbler of inane platitudes, a skillful avoider 
of responsibilities, a tiresome insister upon 
administrative technicalities, a reciter of racy 
tid-bits, without the respect of his brethren or 
confidence of the church; no matter, once 
appointed, only a seismic convulsion, death, 
the crowbar, or the clock can move him. Why? 
Well, to tell the truth, the only special reason 
for it is because it has always been that way. 
Is that why it must stay that way forever and 
forever? 

This is not true of the pastor. He must 
"make good" every year. He must run the 
gantlet of that terrible fourth Quarterly 
Conference. Who of us has not shivered when 
the cold breezes blew down from the bleak 
heights of that suggestive question, "Is there 
any further business?" That ominous pause! 
We can feel it yet. The seconds seemed like 
hours and the minutes like days. Would the 
brother who was clearing his throat never get 
on his feet? 

101 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

Each Quarterly Conference is a standing 
menace to the preacher who cannot or will 
not do effective work. There is no "limit" 
behind which he can take refuge. He is not 
protected by "custom." He is judged solely 
by what he has done or failed to do. This is 
as it should be. 

But why stop with the pastor? If the 
private is judged by what he has done, why 
should the superior officer escape? If it is 
necessary for the church to be exacting with 
her pastors, what is the special reason for 
laxity with her district superintendents? 

The pastor must also reckon with the pre- 
siding bishop and all the district superinten- 
dents of the Annual Conference. His work 
will be carefully reviewed by the Cabinet. 
The pastor's work is scrutinized from every 
angle. He may stay the second year on suf- 
ferance. But if neglectful, incompetent, or 
infelicitous, the moving van will soon be found 
loitering near his front door. 

Why make an exception in the case of the 
district superintendent? Why should an in- 
efficient pastor have to go and an indiffer- 
ent superintendent be permitted to remain 

102 



ANNUAL APPOINTMENT 

until the clock strikes six times? Is it because 
the right men are always appointed to the 
district superintendency? The very sugges- 
tion is ridiculous. It is because the church 
has provided no authoritative method for 
checking up the work of the district superin- 
tendent. 



103 



CHAPTER V 

SUBJECTING THE SUPERINTENDENCY 
TO AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

The Discipline should provide for an 
Annual Conversation between the bishop pre- 
siding over each Annual Conference and the 
pastors of the several districts concerning the 
work, interests, and prospects of every district. 

While the district superintendent and his 
work would naturally come within the pur- 
view of such a Conversation, all the factors 
entering into the progress and possibilities of 
the district should pass under review. The 
superintendent should not participate in this 
Conversation. If the emergency arose, he 
should, of course, be privileged to make what- 
ever statement he might deem necessary. In 
order to conduct an intelligent and profitable 
Conversation, the bishop would have to ac- 
quaint himself with the geographical features, 
religious status, industrial activities, racial 
peculiarities, and the statistical progress of 

104 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

his own denomination in the territory under 
review. 

Objections Considered 

severe ordeals common to system 

"Such a Conversation would be a serious 
ordeal for a superintendent." Well, what of 
that? Is not the fourth Quarterly Conference 
a severe ordeal for the average pastor? Does 
not the "Committee on Episcopacy" seriously 
disturb the equanimity of an occasional 
bishop? The superintendent who has done 
his work would have no more fear than has a 
Sequoia Washingtonia when an oriole lights 
upon one of its gigantic limbs. 

As the matter stands to-day the district 
superintendent is the only paid servant of the 
church whose work is never subjected to 
critical analysis. The Quarterly Conference 
checks up the work of the pastor ; the General 
Conference, the bishops; the Book Committee, 
its agents ; the various benevolent boards, their 
secretaries — the only one who escapes is the 
district superintendent ! 

The importance of the district superinten- 
dency is recognized by all candid students of 

105 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

our polity. Those in charge of our connec- 
tional and benevolent enterprises do not hesi- 
tate to say that he is the "Key Man in Meth- 
odism." Is it not curious that no way has 
been provided for finding just how well the 
key fits the lock or supports the arch? 

FORMAL REPORT NOT SUFFICIENT 

"The report made by the superintendent to 
the Annual Conference sufficiently indicates 
how well his work has been done." But who 
writes this report? The superintendent who 
could not write a report of his own work that 
would pass muster would be a strange speci- 
men. The episcopal attitude toward these 
reports is not infrequently one of indifference 
or impatience. Just how much importance 
the bishops attach to them, or how much 
trouble they take to look behind them is, of 
course, uncertain. We have known several 
to indulge in verbal castigation, publicly ad- 
ministered, because a luckless superintendent 
reported overmuch. Indifference is the normal 
attitude of the Annual Conference. The 
sooner the formality is over the better. Every 
preacher seems anxious to have his own work 

106 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

mentioned in detail, but apparently thinks it 
ought to end there! 

The superintendency is an office of great 
honor and vast power. The bishop alone ex- 
cepted, no man on earth, within the limits of 
his district, exercises such authority. His 
potential power — who will define its limits? 
Yet no one seems to care how this power is 
exercised, or what use, if any, is made of it. 

We know this indifference is only seeming. 
The bishop cares, the pastors of the district 
care, the church at large cares, but we can 
never know how the account stands until we 
have an official accounting. The only men 
who know how and to what extent the work 
of the district has been done are the pastors. 
One pastor does not know, two pastors cannot 
know, three pastors may not know, but all 
the pastors do know. The bishop should be 
required to consult all of them. 

At the present time there is no way for 
these men to express themselves. The few 
who take the trouble to see the bishop may be 
sent by the superintendent. The situation 
must be very serious before any large number 
will venture complaints. It is also equally 

107 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

difficult to speak words of couimeudation 
effectively even when justly deserved. 

NOT A TROUBLE MAKER 

"Such a Conversation would easily degen- 
erate into an altercation." Not necessarily. 
Two restraining factors would always be 
present — the bishop and all the pastors of the 
district. Irresponsible fault-finders would be 
curbed by the former and unjust criticism 
prevented by the latter. The presence of all 
the men would be an effectual safeguard 
against reckless speech on the part of any. 

Would it not be better for men to under- 
stand that what they wish to say about the 
conduct of the affairs of the district must be 
said at this Conversation in the presence of 
many witnesses, rather than in private inter- 
views of an irresponsible nature? The 
presence of the bishop would doubtless induce 
due caution on the part of the habitually out- 
spoken, the perpetually disappointed, and 
those guilty of constant self-overvaluation. 

The bishop could direct the Conversation 
with judicious and systematic questions. 
These might be submitted to the preachers 

108 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

and returned to the bishop in advance of the 
Annual Conference. A wise bishop would go 
away from such a Conversation with a knowl- 
edge of the district which he could not so 
easily and quickly have secured in any other 
way. Would not the bishop then be able to 
make valuable suggestions to his superinten- 
dents? 

WOULD GIVE THE CHURCH A STRONGER 
SUPERINTENDENCY 

"Such an ordeal would make desirable men 
hesitate to accept the office." Not "desirable 
men." If men hesitate because efficiency is 
insisted upon, they will be the very men whose 
hesitation should make the church glad. Able 
men would be attracted to such a task, and 
the men who were doing their work would 
have nothing to fear. Is it not about time to 
keep the other kind out? Or, when once in, 
is it not time to make it a little more difficult 
for them to stay so long? We should make 
it hard for men to get into the superinten- 
dency and harder yet for them to stay — a 
small ingress, a strict surveillance, a com- 
modious egress ! Can we doubt for a moment 

109 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

the salutary effect of such a Conversation 
upon even the most efficient of our superin- 
tendents? The best accelerator for us all is a 
nearly due judgment day! 

WOULD NOT INVALIDATE EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY 

"Such a Conversation would interfere with 
the prerogatives of the bishop in the matter of 
appointing or continuing superintendents in 
office." Not at all. Information would be the 
sole object of the Conversation. Those who 
participated would have neither legislative, 
judicial, nor executive powers. We are firmly 
convinced that the final disposition of the in- 
cumbency of each district should be left in the 
hands of the bishop. For over a century and a 
quarter the bishops have been appointing 
superintendents, and only a prejudiced or ill- 
informed mind will deny that serious mis- 
takes have been rare. Those acquainted with 
our system are well aware that the Bishops 
cannot be charged with entire responsibility 
for even these occasional mistakes. The right 
man has not always been available. The 
nature of the office and the sentiment of the 

no 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

preachers make it impossible to bring in a 
transfer. 

The Annual Conversation, while not inter- 
fering in the least with the final authority 
of the bishop, would inevitably reduce the per- 
centage of mistakes, and bring quick relief 
from those that still occur at the end of the 
first or second year. This Annual Conversa- 
tion would have the most salutary effect upon 
the selection of men for the district superin- 
tendency. If the bishops knew that the ad- 
ministration of their appointees had to face 
this annual ordeal, they would exercise the 
greatest caution. We would not intimate that 
they are not careful, prayerful, and conscien- 
tious at the present time. The Annual Con- 
versation would make them a little more so! 
And it makes a lot of difference to all of us, 
bishops, laymen or pastors, whether our deci- 
sion is to be reviewed at the end of twelve 
short months or go undisputed for six long 
years, and finally terminate without being sub- 
jected to the test of actual worthfulness. 

"This Annual Conversation would keep up 
a constant discussion about the district super- 
in tendency." That is just what the church 

ill 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

has needed for a long time. A thoroughgoing 
and prolonged discussion of the district super- 
intendence — what the system is, what it does 
and how it can be improved — would be a great 
blessing to the church. There has been enough 
discussion of a "sort." Malcontents have tried 
to paralyze this splendid arm of service. Guer- 
rillas have kept up an annoying fire from 
ambush. An answering gun has occasionally 
boomed out, but the friends of the system have 
generally been content to let matters drift. 
Possession was nine points of the law. They 
have failed to meet "hostile" with "construc- 
tive" criticism. There is not the remotest 
probability that the church will ever abandon 
the district superintendency. At least such 
is the opinion of the author. Is it not about 
time to recognize that hostile discussion is as 
futile as it is irritating? Why not stop de- 
bating "How to Get Rid of the Superintend- 
ency," or "What Can We Put in the Place 
of the Superintendency?" and concentrate 
attention on "How Can We Make the Most 
Out of the Superintendency?" 

We have preparatory schools, colleges, and 
theological seminaries for the training of pas- 

112 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

tors, and prolonged effort is made to store 
their minds with predigested solutions for the 
difficult problems of future years. In dis- 
trict conventions, associations, and social 
gatherings, pastors are perpetually discussing 
their tasks, seeking new solutions for old diffi- 
culties, newer methods of church work, a 
stronger appeal to the modern mind. The 
light of publicity is constantly turned upon 
the pastorate, its perplexities are analyzed 
and possible solutions suggested. Indeed, 
there is a frank discussion of all the activities, 
obligations, and difficulties of the church 
until we come to the district superinten- 
dency. Here there is an unaccountable hesi- 
tancy, a "Sh-h-h !-be-quiet-or-you-will-waken- 
the-baby" attitude which is either disgusting 
or amusing, according to the temper of the 
individual. This is unfortunate and unneces- 
sary. Is the district superintendency the 
modern Holy of Holies into which none may 
ever enter? How can the imperfections of 
the office be eliminated or the officer ever 
"toned up" if neither dare be mentioned in 
public? 

This Annual Conversation would roll up 

113 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

the shades, throw open the windows, and let 
in both sunlight and fresh air. The real prob- 
lems of the superintendency would be exam- 
ined, its difficulties recognized, its limitations 
appreciated, its severe labors understood, and 
its splendid achievements commended. 

How many fine things the bishop could say 
to the preachers! And how much better the 
preachers would be satisfied with the work 
of the Cabinet after a heart-to-heart talk with 
the bishop. The Annual Conversation could 
be made a school for studying the district 
superintendency. The bishop might have the 
pastors give brief papers touching the various 
phases of the work on the district and also the 
varied features of the superintendency. The 
Conversation could always be made construc- 
tive in character. Loose criticism, ill-natured 
fault-finding, irresponsible heckling could be 
quickly and permanently eliminated. 

"This Annual Conversation seems cumber- 
some. Could not the same result be achieved 
by a simpler method ?" Well, point it out, 
point it out ! The author has no patent rights 
that cover the field of suggestion. The stone 
never gets to the bottom of the hill unless some 

114 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

one pries it loose at the top. That is what we 
are trying to do. A simple and efficient method 
for checking up the district superintendent is 
what the church needs and what we are seek- 
ing. If you know a better method than the 
one herein suggested, point it out, please ! Do 
not dismiss the whole subject with a hostile 
frown and the imprecations "Impracticable!" 
"Impossible!" and "Absurd!" Take time to 
carefully read the argument through again. 
Have the candor to suggest a better plan before 
you consign this one to the scrap basket. In 
the meantime please remember several features 
that every plan must contain : 

1. It must provide an easy and natural 
method for getting at all the facts. Not what 
a few preachers, influential or otherwise, think 
of the superintendent and his work, but what 
all the preachers know about him and his 
work, must not only be the annual aim but 
the actual achievement. No select committee 
should have the privilege of "spying" upon 
the superintendent. He must not be made 
afraid of his shadow. Your plan must not 
limit his initiative. The Annual Conversa- 
tion provides an "easy and natural method 

115 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

for getting at all the facts" and does not 
interfere with a single prerogative of the 
superintendent. His administration would be 
left as free as the birds of the air. 

2. The investigating unit must not be made 
too large nor too small. The bishop could not 
well take up the districts one after another 
in an executive session of the Annual Confer- 
ence. The unit would be too large. The dis- 
cussion might be limited to the members of 
the district under review, but there would be 
too many spectators. It would be just as un- 
fortunate to make the unit too small. A new 
committee of preachers appointed each year 
to consult with the bishop during the ses- 
sion of the Annual Conference would have 
no way of finding out what it ought to 
know or knowing what it ought to do. If such 
a committee were continued throughout the 
year, it might readily become a serious handi- 
cap to the superintendent. The authority of 
the superintendent could be easily usurped by 
a small coterie of powerful men. Collusion 
would be possible in a small unit. The super- 
intendent would have to tread softly in their 
presence. 

116 



AN EFFICIENCY TEST 

mittee" to expect personal favors for them- 
selves and unwarranted consideration for 
their friends. The Annual Conversation 
avoids all these pitfalls. The superintendent 
remains the superintendent of his district. He 
does not have to consult a few men, reward a 
few men, and will not be judged by a few men. 
The men of the entire district, who know his 
work as a few men do not and cannot, is the 
tribunal by which his value will be determined. 
3. The final accountability of the district 
superintendent would be left in the hands of 
the presiding bishop. His power over the 
selection and retention of district superintend- 
ents must remain what it has always been — 
absolute. No attempt should be made to dic- 
tate the form or establish the exact limits of 
the Annual Conversation. Let each bishop 
work out the details for himself. No official 
system of espionage should be established. 
The Annual Conversation would be minus 
these evils, and would, at the same time, be 
an inspiration to the preachers, a means of en- 
lightenment to the bishops, and an incentive 
to the superintendents. 



117 



CHAPTER VI 

REMOVAL OF THE TIME LIMIT FROM 
THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENCY 

To abolish the "term" feature, the time limit 
must be removed — just a moment, friend, just 
a moment, before you turn in the fire alarm or 
call for the camphor bottle ! 

It is in the interest of shorter terms — 
quicker exits — that the limit should be re- 
moved. Not that all terms may be shorter, 
but that some of them may be much shorter! 
The removal of the limit would make it harder 
for useless superintendents to get into the 
office and easier to get them out. 

The presiding bishop needs a "safe and 
sane" appliance to "speed the parting guest." 
The time limit locks all the doors for six years. 
Of course there is always the final recourse 
to force, but experience shows that the bishops 
do not like the appeal to the ax, and, it must 
be confessed, have not shown any notable dex- 
terity in its use — solely, we judge, because the 

118 



REMOVAL OF THE TIME LIMIT 

appropriate muscles have not had much 
exercise ! 

We do not believe that six years is too long 
for some superintendents, but we freely as- 
sert that six years is entirely too long for 
all of them. As long as we have a limit, men 
will remain the limit (even though they are 
"the limit") until the limit removes them. 
This is the only way a district superintendent 
can escape serious loss of prestige — by re- 
maining the limit. 

The very moment a man is appointed to the 
district superintendency, every iota of influ- 
ence he possesses — domestic, social, fraternal, 
or financial — is exerted to keep him there for 
six years. His annual reappointment does 
not depend so much upon what he has done 
in the office as upon the anterior fact of his 
first appointment to the office. 

The removal of the time limit from the pas- 
torate has had this curiously beneficial effect : 
Many a misfit used to be tolerated, or an 
indifferently successful pastor endured be- 
cause the church desired to establish a repu- 
tation for loyalty. A few influential laymen 
said: "O, well, it is only for one year or two 

119 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

years longer. We had better stand it. The 
limit will soon relieve us and the reputation of 
the church is worth much." This tendency 
has largely departed with the time limit. The 
pastor now must justify himself every year. 
The results have been beneficial to the church 
in general. 

The removal of the limit from the superin- 
tendency would have the same effect. The 
problem of "saving his face," as the Chinaman 
might say, would have to be solved by the in- 
dolent or incapable superintendent in some 
other way than by pleading the privilege of 
staying the limit. The problem facing every 
superintendent on entering the office would 
not be to do enough to stay the limit but to do 
enough to stay at all. He is the last man in 
Methodism who should be tolerated. The 
church should gently but firmly disengage the 
fingers of the man who insists on "hanging 
on." There are some places where an ineffi- 
cient man can "hang on" without much injury 
to the church, but the superintendency is not 
one of them. Such a man should not be pro- 
tected by an artificial safeguard like the term 
limit. Only when all idea of a definite term 
120 



REMOVAL OP THE TIME LIMIT 

has been obliterated from the mind of the 
appointer and appointee will an incumbent be 
reappointed the fourth year because he did 
well the third year. 

It may be urged that the removal of the 
time limit would mean perpetual superinten- 
dency for some meu. That is a possibility. 
But it would mean perpetual superintendency 
only for the perpetually fit. The man who 
stays indefinitely under the conditions advo- 
cated would richly deserve his job. No care- 
less, inefficient, or unworthy man could long 
keep the real facts from reaching the surface 
in the Annual Conversation previously sug- 
gested. 

The problem is twofold: How to get the 
right kind of men into the superintendency, 
and how to get the wrong kind of men out. 
The Annual Conversation would induce the 
greatest caution in the selection of men, and, 
with the term limit gone, the wrong men could 
not stay long. 



121 



CHAPTER VII 
THE TIME LIMIT A WEAKNESS 

If we are to have the district superinten- 
dency, every legal impediment to its efficiency 
should be removed. The bishops should be 
given the largest possible liberty in the choice 
of superintendents. They should be compelled 
to carefully investigate their work, and they 
should have the untrammeled power, at the 
end of any year, to terminate any superin- 
tendency. 

This power, as we have already shown, they 
now have in theory but not in fact, a handicap 
which fatally limits their range of choice when 
selecting men for the superintendency. It 
puts undesirable men into the office. When a 
superintendent retires, a place must be found 
for him! The unwritten law is that he must 
have approximately the same grade of appoint- 
ment vacated when he was appointed to the 
superintendency. Do you not see how this 

122 



THE TIME LIMIT A WEAKNESS 

single fact limits the choice of his successor? 
The real problem of the presiding bishop is 
not, how to get the right man for the vacant 
district, but how to get the right place for the 
vacating superintendent! The superintendent 
must go; maybe he ought to stay. The work 
demands his retention and no capable suc- 
cessor may be available. But what the retir- 
ing superintendent ought to do, and what the 
presiding bishop knows ought to be done, has 
nothing at all to do with it! The law says he 
must go this year. "No available place for him 
and no suitable man for his place," did you 
say? What has that to do with it? The law 
says he must go, and go at once. That is an 
end to all controversy. What may happen to 
him or the church, who cares? 

We are dealing with an arbitrary law, not 
with facts as they are or conditions as they 
should be met. Having a good place for a 
superintendent to "drop" into is one of the 
surest ways of dropping into the district 
superintendency. 

The bishops are not to blame. It would 
frequently be otherwise if they were clothed 
with discretionary powers. The real autocrat 

123 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

is an arbitrary law which the bishops cannot 
change and dare not evade. 

If it were not for the "fetish" of finishing 
his term — something which the church never 
promised — an adjustment that would have 
been eminently satisfactory to the church and 
superintendent might have been made after 
the fourth year or fifth year ; or, if the bishop 
could have waited until the seventh or eighth 
year, an adjustment that would have re- 
dounded to the glory of God and the upbuild- 
ing of the kingdom of his Son would have 
been possible. Forced to make the change this 
year, forced to do it against his better judg- 
ment and in the face of impossible circum- 
stances, the Bishop can only do his best — the 
church must take the consequences. 

The time limit keeps desirable men out of 
the superintendency. They know that they 
will be "discharged" at the end of six years. 
It will not be a question of having done their 
work well or ill, the law will make it necessary 
for them to go. Go where? Anywhere! The 
law is only concerned with getting rid of them. 
They must take their chances. 

Now, it is a significant fact that it is almost 

124 



THE TIME LIMIT A WEAKNESS 

impossible to induce a church to take a man 
who has to move. It makes little difference 
why he must go. The mere fact that he is 
forced out, even though the crime is perpe- 
trated by a law of the church, militates against 
him. Will he leave a church wiiere he may 
stay indefinitely, or until opportunity for a 
fair exchange comes, and accept a position 
that will presently leave him facing a stone 
wall? Assuredly, if it is "incumbents" the 
church seeks and not "superintendents." Men 
of a certain type will always be willing to 
leave the ills they have and fly to others they 
know not of. But it is just the over-willing 
kind that the church should protect herself 
against. She should not smooth the pathway 
into the superintendency for the men who 
want the job ; but, rather, make it easy to get 
the particular kind of men needed for the 
work. 

When a prominent pastor accepts a district 
his friends ask, "Why did he do it?" Just as 
though he needed to justify himself for oc- 
cupying one of the most difficult and useful 
positions within the power of his church to 
bestow! And the church is apt to think that 

125 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

his best days must be over or he would not 
have gone into the superintendence Surely, 
this is a pitiable plight for a great office. 
Everybody knows that the superintendent has 
put his head into a noose that a little later 
Avill — maybe it is the figure of speech that had 
better be left suspended! 

This is the reason why strong men in their 
prime hesitate to enter the superintendency. 
Twenty years later, when there are not so 
many beckoning hands, it may be all right. 
The "lirnit" will guarantee them six years more 
somewhere in the neighborhood of their 
"grade," and by that time they will be ready 
to quietly "snuggle" down in a little bunga- 
low. If the church could have had those men 
twenty years before in the superintendency — 
but what is the use to speculate? O, the pity 
of it all ! 

Will the time ever come when we shall have 
our greatest preachers and most capable ad- 
ministrators in the district superintendency? 
Will it ever be possible for the bishops to in- 
duce such men to accept the office? Yes, when 
the superintendency is no longer doled out as 
a pension, or longer used as a refuge against 

126 



THE TIME LIMIT A WEAKNESS 

the withering blasts of time. Those will be 
glorious days for our beloved church when the 
strongest men in her ministry may look to- 
ward the superintendency as a career and not 
as an accident to be avoided, or a necessity to 
be delayed as long as possible ! 



127 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE INDETERMINATE SUPERINTEND- 
ENCY— ITS GREAT VALUE 

By this term, "the indeterminate superin- 
tendence" we mean all that the district super- 
intendence now is, minus only its arbitrary 
termination at a fixed period. Many of the 
advantages of this system have already inad- 
vertently crept into the discussion and need no 
restatement. It has been impossible, in point- 
ing out the embarrassments of the "limit" 
system, not to imply and occasionally men- 
tion the benefits of a "better way." 

Would Keep Superintendents at Their 
Best 

An indeterminate superintendency would 
give no opportunity for "slowing down" to 
jump off. The writer once heard an eminent 
minister say that he did an immense amount 
of pastoral work the first year, less the second 
year, still less the third year, practically none 

128 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

the fourth year and none at all the fifth year. 
Those were the happy days of the "limited" 
pastorate. Without a limit to protect him, he 
probably would have been as diligent a pastor 
at the end of the fifth year as he was at the 
beginning of the first year. And this was a 
brother of "many" parts; at least he was 
elected to the episcopacy a little later! 

The man who knows he is going to lose his 
job, it matters not how early he reports, how 
late he stays, how hard he works, or how much 
he gets done; that on a certain day, fixed by 
law with the deliberate intent of getting rid 
of him, the reins will be gently but firmly taken 
from his hands and given to another, surely, 
that man would be a little different from most 
of us if he could come dashing enthusiastically 
up the home stretch where the bishop stands 
waiting to introduce his successor ! 

The bishop and the district superintendent 
are the only men left against whom the church 
protects herself with the poor expedient of a 
time limit. But why make it three score and 
thirteen in the one case and only two jumps 
and four jerks in the other? 

Would it not be more in keeping with this 

129 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

high office for the church to find the right man 
and say to him : "Here is the biggest job within 
my gift ; no task in all the range of my activ- 
ities is fraught with such great importance 
as the one now committed to you; what the 
preachers will be and what the churches will 
do must largely depend upon what you are 
and how you do ; it is clearly understood that 
all your claims upon this office will cease at 
the end of the first year and at the close of 
each subsequent year; but, if you are con- 
scientious and thorough in the discharge of 
your duties, if you will make full proof of 
your superintendency every year, no arbitrary 
limit will crush you, no clanging clock will 
dismiss you; you shall stay until both of us 
are convinced that a change should be made"? 
Some years since the church decided she 
had confidence enough in her pastors to say 
this. Has not the time now come to say it 
also to her district superintendents? 

Indeterminate Superintendency One of 
Cumulative Power 

When the pastoral limit was three years the 
superintendent remained four years ; when the 

130 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

pastoral limit was lengthened to five years the 
superintendent was permitted to remain six 
years, always one year longer than the oldest 
pastor on the district. Since the entire per- 
sonnel of a district had to change in five years, 
the church saw the necessity of having an 
experienced man in charge. 

But now pastors remain six, eight, ten years 
and longer, and it not infrequently happens 
that the most radical changes must be made 
in the working force of a district before the 
new superintendent is familiar with the modus 
operandi. Under these circumstances all four 
factors in the problem — the bishop, the church, 
the pastor and the superintendent — may be 
embarrassed by his inexperience. 

One of the most serious defects of the limited 
superintendency is the inability of the super- 
intendent to become acquainted with the mem- 
bers of the various official boards of his dis- 
trict until it is just about time for the clock 
to bid him adieu. This difficulty is accentuated 
by the present-day tendency to larger districts. 

It will be conceded that the influence of a 
superintendent cannot reach its maximum 
until he is thoroughly acquainted with two 

131 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

important bodies, (1) the pastors of his dis- 
trict, and (2) the official members of the 
various churches. He will probably need no 
introduction to the preachers. But the one 
thousand or fifteen hundred officials of the 
various churches of his district — how shall he 
ever get to know them, or be able to even 
pronounce their names correctly? 

Every one of our churches to-day has a 
formidable list of official members. About 
everybody is in, the sexton alone excepted. 
Unwarranted discrimination, about which one 
might easily grow indignant! Probably the 
next General Conference will give his merit 
due consideration. 

The pastor is at a disadvantage until he 
knows the members of his official board — until 
he knows them : their idiosyncrasies of tem- 
perament, peculiar habits of thought and 
modes of speech, reliability of judgment, and 
moral consistency. How many months of 
close contact and painstaking observation — 
yes, how many unfortunate blunders and even 
tragic mistakes must be made, before he 
possesses this information! 

The influence of a district superintendent 

132 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

with an official board is derived from three 
sources. 1. Their respect for him as a minis- 
ter of the gospel. 2. Their confidence in him 
as an official of their church. 3. Their ac- 
quaintance with him and friendship for him 
as a man. If stated in the order of their im- 
portance, the last would be first. But "ac- 
quaintance" takes time, and "friendship" is a 
matter of slow growth. The opportunities for 
acquaintance and friendship between the offi- 
cials and the superintendent are fragmentary. 
The superintendent can come only occa- 
sionally. Some members of the Quarterly 
Conference attend occasionally, some semi- 
occasionally, and many never at all. A good 
memory for names and faces will help some, 
addresses and social functions will help some 
more, but only time can solve the problem of 
getting the superintendent and his constit- 
uency acquainted. But this is the one thing 
the superintendent does not have. Just when 
he can begin to exert a personal influence 
with the official laymen of his district, influ- 
ence that will hold them steady in a crisis 
and make them responsive to his leadership, 
the clock strikes for the last time. When an 

133 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

efficient superintendent is in a position to do 
Ms very best work, an arbitrary law throws 
wide the door and bids him begone. It is not 
a question of being Methodistic; it does not 
look like good sense. 

Would Give the Superintendent Increased 
Influence with His Preachers 

The function of a superintendent is not to 
do the work of other men. When he gets into 
a trench with pick and shovel the action may 
commend his energy but not his judgment. 
He may prove a good laborer — his conduct 
has already shown him to be a poor superin- 
tendent. It is his duty to find work for other 
men, show them how to do it, and see that it 
is done. 

Now, the district superintendency of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church is different from 
the divisional superintendency of a railway, 
the superintendency of a factory or a con- 
struction gang. In these spheres superinten- 
dents have absolute power. If employees are 
incompetent, insubordinate, or indolent, tem- 
porizing methods need not be employed. 

134 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

Superintendents do not have to "put up with" 
and "make the best" of the help they have. 
It is immaterial to their superior officers 
whether the present working force is retained 
in part, in whole, or not at all. They ask for 
results. The superintendents may employ, 
discharge, or command their help as the exi- 
gencies of the work, and the temperament, 
habits, or capacities of the men necessitate. 
But no district superintendent in the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church has such power. The 
Annual Conference hires and discharges the 
preachers; the bishop assigns them to their 
various fields of labor, and the superintendent 
is sent out to see whether they are on their 
job and at their work. He has no power to 
discharge or shift a single member of his work- 
ing force, command the introduction of new 
methods, or force the preachers to longer 
hours of service or greater intensity of effort. 
And yet the real value of his office largely 
consists in the influence he exerts over the 
mental attitude, the moral conduct, the spirit- 
ual activity, and financial enterprise of the 
ministers under his charge. 

The influence of a district superintendent 

135 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

with his men is traceable to six sources: 
1. His standing in the conference. 2. His 
ability as a preacher. 3. His administrative 
capacity. 4. His companionability. 5. His 
trustworthiness. 6. The length of his stay on 
the district. In the order of their importance 
the last is by no means least. 

A superintendent is practically helpless 
without the constant, enthusiastic support of 
his preachers — all of them. It not infrequently 
happens that some of the most influential 
pastors are indifferent to his plans and pro- 
jects because they fully expect to be on that 
district and in those churches long after his 
removal from the district. They do not ex- 
pect him to have anything to say as to when or 
where they shall go. It is very plain that if 
they did not know when he was scheduled to 
go it would be a great deal easier for him to 
command their loyal support. If they knew 
that he would probably outstay them, the situ- 
ation would be reversed. 

Safe in the Hands of the Bishops 

When the bishops were wandering stars, 
occasionally seen by a few and rarely heard 

136 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

by the many, perhaps a limited superin- 
tendency was a blessing. Prevented by law 
from continuous supervision, their knowledge 
of superintendents and districts was hap- 
hazard and hearsay. The limit worked auto- 
matically, and that was something. Rotation 
regulated by law is better than stagnation 
malodorous with decay and death. But we are 
living in a better day. The episcopal area 
holds each bishop to a definite field for a period 
of four years. Soon we will have bishops 
serving the same area eight, twelve, or sixteen 
years. An indeterminate district superin- 
tendency will be safe in their hands. 

The bishops, chosen from the great body of 
our ministry because of their conspicuous abil- 
ity, high character, and discriminating judg- 
ment, should not be handicapped in their 
administration by a law that gives them only 
partial control over their chief lieutenants. 
They will know when changes ought to be 
made and where to find the right men for the 
districts. They will have time to watch the 
work of the various superintendents under 
their jurisdiction, and to obtain that first-hand 
knowledge which will give the church such 

137 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

episcopal supervision and district oversight 
as she has never deemed possible. 

The Limit a Survival 

As a church we have been gradually laying 
aside the swaddling clothes of various limi- 
tations. The limit has been taken from the 
probationaryship. The limit was gradually 
extended and finally removed from the pastor- 
ate. It has been extended and must be re- 
moved from the district superintendency. 

In the beginning, checks, limitations, and 
various correctives automatically applied, 
were necessary because the organization was 
not only new, but governed by new, never- 
tested methods, and almost wholly in the 
hands of untrained men. But the Methodist 
Episcopal Church has passed out of the ex- 
perimental period of her existence. She is not 
only one of the leading denominations in 
Christendom, but among the most stable of 
all organizations in the world. 

The benevolent secretaries of our church 
can go into the banks and borrow hundreds of 
thousands of dollars. The only security de- 
manded is their official signature. Is it be- 

138 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

cause of personal confidence in these secre- 
taries as men or accurate knowledge of their 
personal assets? By no means. The banks 
have confidence in the great organization 
which they represent — the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church. They know that just as truly 
as the sun shines, the spring and fall Confer- 
ences will send the money to pay those notes. 

There was a time when the banks would 
lend little or no money to build new churches ; 
but to-day, the banks in the territory with 
which the writer is best acquainted will lend 
fifty, sixty, or even seventy-five per cent of 
the value of the new structure. As well try to 
lasso the stars as to stampede the membership 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She has 
the smallest percentage of dead or dying 
churches in American Protestantism. Every- 
where she possesses her vast field with a 
pertinacity, solidity, and continuity which 
challenges the admiration of the world. 

John Wesley is reported to have said that 
if he served the same congregation for three 
years, he would preach them and himself into 
perdition. A strange remark from the lips of 
one of the most versatile geniuses of history! 

139 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

But what would Mr. Wesley say of Methodist 
pastorates stretching over twelve, fifteen, or 
eighteen years? Why, if he were here now, 
he would change his mind, that is all. This is 
the prerogative of great men, and is not denied 
those of us who walk in humbler ways. There 
were great men in those days, but there are 
greater men in the ministry of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church to-day. We have thousands 
of splendidly equipped men who can stay in- 
definitely and do their best work at the end of 
the seventh, the tenth, or fifteenth year. Is it 
true that the man who might be an unlimited 
pastor must be a limited superintendent? If 
so, why? 

It was once thought that no man could be an 
acceptable pastor longer than two years. A 
little later the church thought that some men 
might possibly do acceptable work for three 
years. And there, by the Pillars of Hercules, 
hung the sign Ne plus ultra! But venture- 
some navigators sailed boldly out over the un- 
charted sea and brought back the startling 
news of "land ahead!" The sign came down. 

The standard of ministerial efficiency rose 
higher and higher. With significant emphasis 

140 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

and in increasing numbers the church asked : 
"Why is this necessary? where is the benefit? 
We no sooner get a pastor than he must plan 
to go, and we must worry about his successor." 
Finally, with many serious misgivings, two 
more years were added to the limit. Some 
harps w T ere hung upon the willows and much 
wailing was heard by the waters of Babylon. 
Prophets of evil enjoyed a brief day of popu- 
larity. But the church kept right on asking 
embarrassing questions : "Why stop here? All 
preachers cannot stay indefinitely, but some 
can. Why not settle the whole question of 
ministerial service upon the sole basis of con- 
tinuous acceptability?" The reasoning seemed 
good, and this time the oft-changed limit was 
torn up by the roots and went where the 
ancient Bostonians dumped the tea — over- 
board. And there it will forever stay. When 
the right man finds the right church he domi- 
ciles until his work is done. That is good sense 
and the finest kind of religion. When the 
right superintendent gets into the right dis- 
trict he should stay until his work is done. 
Would not that be good religion expressed in 
terms of common sense? 

141 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

Every time the pastoral limit has been 
lengthened the results quickly justified the 
action. The district superintendent's term has 
been advanced just once — from four to six 
years. Have not the results justified that 
action? We challenge a list of evils brought 
upon the church by this lengthened superin- 
tendency. The good has been somewhat 
counterbalanced by the fact that as long as we 
have a limit, every man appointed — good, bad, 
or indifferent — usually stays the limit. A 
limit of ten years would help, but it would 
incidentally perpetuate the evil just men- 
tioned. The extension of two additional years, 
in the opinion of the author, has given the 
church the most result-achieving superin- 
tendency she has ever known. The next 
logical step in the development of her polity, 
a step that will not only be in perfect har- 
mony with other changes that have been made, 
but that is demanded by these very changes, 
will be the adoption of an indeterminate dis- 
trict superintendency. 

Why Not? 
If it would be in harmony with the evolution 

142 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

of the finest ecclesiastical economy God has 
ever given any branch of His church, and if it 
would put "the key men of Methodism" in a 
position where they could achieve the best re- 
sults, why not? 

The only reasonable answer is that the 
church does not appreciate the tremendous 
part played by the district superintendency in 
the development of her great spiritual em- 
pire. "But," you may say, "If the work ac- 
complished has been so great, why does not 
the church understand?" 

The answer is simple. It is not because 
the church is dull or blind, but because the 
work of the district superintendent is done so 
largely out of sight. The work of the pastor 
is conspicuous. He lives in the blazing light 
of perpetual publicity. He cultivates a small 
field. His diligence is read and known of all 
his parishioners. They see him wearily fol- 
lowing the plow. Their souls are refreshed 
by the "beaten oil" he brings into the sanc- 
tuary. They note his eager footsteps seeking 
the lost. His prayers and ministries have 
brought comfort to their hearts in hours of 
deep bereavement. But the district superin- 

143 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

tendent? O, he was here two, three, or four 
months ago, but where he is now or what he 
may be doing — with a significant shrug of the 
shoulders — who knows? 

These critics overlook the fact that the 
superintendent has one hundred, one hundred 
and fifty or two hundred churches (counting 
congregations, not charges) within his terri- 
tory. Instead of being out of his home several 
afternoons and an occasional evening of each 
week, he is absent from one third to three 
fourths of the time, sleeping in strange beds, 
traveling all kinds of roads in all kinds of 
weather, in variegated conveyances, and eat- 
ing such things ( or making an heroic attempt 
to) as are set before him — whatever may be 
the qualms of the "inner man." He does not 
meet the same officiary month after month nor 
face the same congregation Sabbath after Sab- 
bath, consequently a large number of unre- 
flecting folk reach the erroneous conclusion 
that they are paying him a very large sum of 
money for a very small amount of work. 

Most of us do not overburden ourselves 
with habits of reflection and critical investi- 
gation before allowing our impressions to 

144 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

solidify into firmly rooted convictions. We 
like to "jump at conclusions,'' lured by the 
eye and deceived by the ear. It flatters our 
vanity to think that we can see through a 
proposition without time, reflection, or infor- 
mation. From the very beginning, the dis- 
trict superintendency has been the victim of 
this tendency. The "blind and halt" have 
not always been confined to the laity. Minis- 
ters who could not be advanced by a conscien- 
tious superintendency, or whose erratic 
administration could not be sustained, or 
whose lapses could not be tolerated, have 
naturally turned upon the superintendency as 
the source of all their ills. Very popular 
ministers, eagerly desired by many churches, 
have frequently affected to hold the superin- 
tendency in supercilious disdain. 

It will be readily seen that such an office 
cannot be administered without evoking op- 
position from certain preachers and some 
churches. All the preachers cannot be satis- 
fied and all the churches cannot be accommo- 
dated. Some disagreement and dissatisfaction 
is unavoidable. But all of that is a good 
argument for abolishing, not the district 

145 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

superintendency, but the frailties of human 
nature. 

When we see the pathetic fear in which 
other Protestant pastors live, of being forced 
to resign before they receive a call; see them 
"holding on" in the face of a dwindling con- 
stituency while waiting for an opening else- 
where; see them forced out of their chosen 
work in middle life ; when we learn how pulpit 
committees in other denominations are deluged 
with applications as soon as an opening 
occurs; when we see these great denomina- 
tions losing their village and rural churches 
by the score; when we pass these buildings 
once vocal with the Creator's praises, now 
devoted to secular uses or rotting pitifully by 
the wayside, we can get a clear idea of our 
fate about the beginning of the second genera- 
tion following the abandonment of the district 
superintendency. 

We are not haunted by the remotest fear 
that the Methodist Episcopal Church can ever 
be so indifferent to the plain lessons of her 
own history as to abolish one of the chief 
instrumentalities of her greatness, but there 
is grave danger that indifference, timidity, or 

146 



INDETERMINATE SUPERINTENDENCY 

the harsh cry of the alarmist will prevent her 
from making that one change in her polity 
which the times sorely need and her own wel- 
fare has long demanded — the removal of the 
time limit from the district superintendency. 



147 



CHAPTER IX 

THE INDETERMINATE SUPERINTEND- 
ENCY— OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

Ministry Always Conservative 

It is probably true that the ministry of the 
church has never favored a single extension 
of the pastoral time limit. The question was 
never sent down to the Annual Conferences. 
It is very doubtful whether a half dozen Con- 
ferences would have been recorded in favor of 
the proposition to remove the limit from the 
pastorate when this radical action was taken 
by the General Conference. A vast majority 
of the Conferences, some of them the strongest 
in the connection, would have recorded an 
almost unanimous negative. The author re- 
calls vividly the pathetic panic of his pastor 
when the limit was extended from three to 
five years. The itinerancy had been destroyed. 
The triumphant progress of the church had at 
last been arrested. He had always felt sure 

148 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

that the General Conference would some day 
destroy the church — and now the blow had 
fallen ! Nevertheless, he quickened his pace a 
little and stayed five years ! 

Why is the ministry always conservative? 
A very interesting question, but one which we 
cannot take the time to discuss. Suffice it to 
say that we get use to doing things one way 
and do not like to be disturbed. We plod in 
one rut so long that it requires more mental 
"heft" to get out than most of us have to 
spare. Or, we are having a hard enough time 
as things now are, and do not want any change 
that will give the other fellow additional ad- 
vantage. This is the trouble with most of us, 
whether in or out of the ministry : we instantly 
conclude that every proposed change has its 
genesis in the desire of some one to get on at 
our expense. We do not fear the ultimate 
judgment of the preachers upon this subject 
if they will give it thorough and dispassionate 
investigation. 

It is but fair to say that ministers are al- 
ways conservative about changing the polity 
of the church because of their high apprecia- 
tion of its unexcelled value. They are in a 

149 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

position to understand the superiority of the 
itinerancy and are naturally jealous for the 
preservation of its integrity. They know what 
the system does and are very apt to reach out 
a restraining hand when there is the slightest 
danger that any part of it will be cast into 
the melting pot. But changes have come, and 
the system has lived. And as time goes on 
changes will have to come, but the itinerancy 
will never die! 

Would Give Fewer Preachers Access to 
the sljperintendency 

Some years since an Annual Conference 
debated the question of the reduction of its 
districts from six to four. The most telling 
speech against the change was based upon the 
fact that a reduction in the number of dis- 
tricts also meant a reduction in the number of 
district superintendents, and this would mean 
the perpetual exclusion of a certain number 
of men from the office. 

But we know Methodist preachers too well 
to suppose for one moment that any large 
number could be moved by the selfish con- 
sideration just suggested. A small number 

150 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

may want many districts and brief terms for 
reasons that are entirely personal. The 
majority would be influenced in their final 
decision not by its possible effect upon any 
ambitions they might have, but by its influence 
upon the great cause to which they have de- 
voted their lives. We only make mention of 
this objection because it has been pointed out 
to us, and we do not wish to omit any material 
item in the discussion. 

Preachers Fear a Long-Term Superin- 
tendence 

Many of them dread the thought of any 
man, even the right man, holding this position 
indefinitely. This is probably the real crux 
of the matter. We have hesitated to say it, 
and especially to put it in such simple, 
straightforward language. But why not tell 
the whole truth and be over with it? Ignoring 
salient objections is a poor way to make prog- 
ress — somebody will find it out. 

This is the objection that will come the 
soonest to the minds of most preachers and 
will stay the longest. We admit its force, 
but insist that it is a palpable begging of the 

151 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

question. It is not judging the indeterminate 
superintendency upon the basis of its possible 
achievements, but from the narrow standpoint 
of how the larger influence of the longer-termed 
superintendency may affect us. This is poor 
judgment and poorer religion. 

It must not be forgotten that some men have 
practically spent a lifetime in the superin- 
tendency under the present system. Some of 
these men have gone from district to district 
because they have shown unusual administra- 
tive capacity. Occasionally one has been con- 
tinued for reasons that need not be discussed. 
Have these long terms proven disastrous to 
the church? Did they develop special evils 
or dangerous tendencies? Was the "increas- 
ing power" which these men wielded devoted 
to base or questionable ends? Every Con- 
ference in Methodism has had several of 
these men who gave from twelve to thirty 
years to district supervision. The preachers 
were proud of these administrations and 
tenderly revere the names of these great ad- 
ministrators. If long-termed superintenden- 
cies under the present system have proven 
unhazardous, surely the indeterminate super- 

152 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

intendency with or without its annual adjudi- 
cation would not be a dangerous experiment. 

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that 
the real object of the indeterminate superin- 
tendency is not to lengthen the possible term 
of service. We are thoroughly aware of the 
fact that many will conclude at once that our 
only aim is to make it easy for superintendents 
to go on and on, like a certain famous brook. 
Nothing could be farther from the truth. 
Succinctly stated, our purpose is about like 
this : We would make it hard to get in, harder 
to stay in, and easier to get out ! The church 
would have nothing to fear from the men who 
could stay indefinitely under the terms herein 
advocated. They would be the exceptional 
men, whose striking qualifications would be 
speedily recognized by both ministry and laity. 

Moreover, many preachers and multitudes 
of our people do not understand the philos- 
ophy of the itinerant system. They think that 
it is a "toss up" each year as to where the 
preachers shall go. It all depends upon the 
chance whim of the bishop, the ulterior influ- 
ence of the preacher, or the arbitrary decision 
of the superintendent. The supposition is 

153 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

entirely erroneous. The bishop has absolute 
power but never abuses it ; the superintendent 
has considerable influence but does not dare 
use it unfairly, while "ulterior influence" 
would likely send the man to the backwoods 
who appealed to it. These considerations are 
always negligible or, if ever operative, feeble 
and intermittent in their expression. 

In enumerating the achievements of district 
superintendents we credited them with making 
the appointments. It would have been in 
stricter harmony with the facts to have said 
that the district superintendents "arrange" 
the appointments — the preachers make them! 
the bishops and superintendents "fix" a man's 
appointment only once — the first time it is 
made — after that he makes his own appoint- 
ment! He may never have received a commis- 
sion conferring this power, but he has it, and 
he is the only man who does have it. All these 
years he has been blaming others for what he 
has been doing for himself! It is the task 
of the bishop and superintendents to shunt 
each man into the siding for which he is billed. 
The church he has been serving sends the bill 
of lading to the Conference, and from it there 
154 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

is no appeal. The Cabinet has no arbitrary 
power to prefer one man above another — every 
man must go where he belongs. There are 
no savory bits of patronage for favorites. 
Each receives Avhat he has earned, no more 
and no less. If the system were not operated 
on this schedule, it would go to pieces about 
the beginning of the fourth year. Many of 
us who did not like the last station in our 
itinerary should have carefully studied the 
"bill of lading" instead of denouncing the 
conductor and his crew. There is only one 
honest way of getting to the place we wish to 
go : attending carefully to the little formality 
of having ourselves properly "billed." And 
that is the only way to stay after we once 
arrive. Indeed, staying in the place we want 
to be is just as difficult as getting there. If 
the bill of lading goes astray, we are presently 
elsewhere! In other words, there is every 
likelihood that the place we are in, though it 
may not be according to the schedule of our 
ambitions, is just the place we have made for 
ourselves. 

Did you ever see a yard engine? Noisy 
little fusser; smoky nuisance — bane of the 

155 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

housewife; peripatetic gadabout. O, you can 
say a lot of mean things about it, and truly. 
Shunting, shuffling; halting, hauling; pranc- 
ing, pushing; backing, butting; stopping, 
starting — and going nowhere. Sinuous freight 
trains, a mile long, thunder by, disdaining a 
second glance at the wheezy yard engine. 
Scores of trim coaches, clad in smug respecta- 
bility, come and go without so much as wasting 
a stare on the humble compatriot of the side- 
track, the freight shed, and coal pockets. 

But have you reflected that nothing much 
could get anywhere if it were not for the 
little yard engine that goes nowhere? We 
may not like the noise and smoke, but every- 
thing worth while about a railroad starts with 
the yard engine — indeed, is utterly dependent 
upon its good will. If it were not for her 
lowly service, the commerce of the world would 
halt, travel would cease, and gaunt famine 
stalk through the land. 

The yard engine has no freedom of choice. 
She cannot "make up" the train according to 
taste and inclination. She does not dare show 
"favoritism." She never sends one car on a 
pleasure jaunt to the Pacific, with side trips 

156 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

to scenic wonders and recuperating relays at 
luxurious resorts, and make another the 
menial of a fertilizer factory. Each must go 
to its own place. The yard engine may have 
some opinion but no discretion. The "lading" 
must be obeyed. 

Brother, the Cabinet is the yard engine in 
action, that is all; but that is everything. 
We preachers are not pawns on a chess board. 
We are "billed" for somewhere and it is the 
duty of these men to see that we get to the 
right place. The Cabinet does not have the 
authority to say where we shall go. We do 
not have that power. Nor do our friends 
label us for the next station. The Cabinet 
inspects our bill of lading — what we have been 
doing and how — and shunts us into the siding 
nominated in the document. 

"But," you say, "the Cabinet makes mis- 
takes." Of course; so does the yard engine. 
Sometimes the bill of lading is obscure, mis- 
leading; or, the Cabinet may not properly 
interpret the cabalistic characters. The fault 
usually lies at the door of an imperfectly in- 
formed district superintendency. The super- 
intendent who knows his preachers and 

157 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

churches the best, will make the fewest mis- 
takes. Changing district superintendents fre- 
quently, to keep them from acquiring power, 
robs the system of much of its usefulness. 
The usefulness of a superintendent is gauged 
by his knowledge of churches and preachers. 
Recognition for worthy pastors and scientific 
administration for the church is possible only 
when the superintendent knows what every 
church needs and where every man belongs. 
This is the only real "power" the superin- 
tendent has, and the more of it he has the 
better it is for churches and preachers. 

It cannot be denied that some preachers 
depend upon the system to carry them. Mem- 
bership in an Annual Conference solves all 
their problems. The church now owes them 
support and advancement. The former is 
assured and the latter is to be secured by 
cajoling the authorities. What a tragedy! 
The authorities dare not promote the un- 
un worthy or demote the deserving. Once upon 
a time we knew a preacher who declaimed 
loudly that he had "been slain in the high 
places of the church." It was the little vol- 
cano right under his nose that had done the 

158 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

"slaying." Queer that he should get that 
mixed up with "the high places in the church." 
The author will admit that at various times 
he has feared the "power" of presiding elders 
and district superintendents, but he has al- 
ways feared that they did not have enough 
power! If there is any man in Methodism of 
whom we have reason to stand in dread, both 
churches and preachers, it is the powerless 
district superintendent. 

Possible Effect Upon Preachers Not the 
Main Question 

The interests of the preachers are of grave 
importance, but they are not paramount. No 
denomination can long survive without a 
reasonably satisfied ministry. Indeed, with- 
out the whole-hearted advocacy of her stand- 
ards and unabridged belief in the divine nature 
of her mission on the part of her ministry, all 
growth is impossible. The world does not care 
to hear men who do not know what they be- 
lieve nor how long they are going to keep what- 
ever fragments of faith they now have. It is 
clearly understood that the church cannot live 
without her ministry ; nevertheless, the church 

159 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

does not exist for the ministry. She is not 
here to give us continuous and satisfactory 
employment. The ministry exists for the 
church. Reasonable opportunity and protec- 
tion the ministry must have, but the funda- 
mental mission of the church is not the sup- 
port of her ministry, however desirable and 
necessary that may be, but the salvation of 
the race; and she must be free to adjust her 
polity to this great task. 

Preachers Would Share the Benefits 

Anything that helps the church must also 
help the preacher. If the indeterminate 
superintendency would make the church 
stronger, it would also make the ministry 
more attractive. Is not this self-evident? 
Increasing efficiency in the ministry would 
give additional strength to the church, and 
this could only mean greater ability on the 
part of the church to support her ministers 
during their active years and protection 
against want in retirement. If it can be shown 
that the indeterminate superintendency would 
be a blessing to the church, no power on earth 

160 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

could prevent her ministers from sharing in 
that blessing. 

Would Be a Great Boon to the Preachers 

A superintendent's power to help his 
preachers is almost entirely dependent upon 
his influence with the laity of his district. 
This influence is practically nil, so far as 
directing their attitudes and decisions is con- 
cerned, until he has established proper social 
relations. But this takes time. Any accretion 
of influence with the officiary of the district 
would be used by the superintendent to pro- 
tect his men against prejudice, false reports, 
or inconsiderate haste on the part of official 
boards when inclined to take hostile action. 
The friends of the superintendent would 
naturally wait to consult him before reaching 
a final decision, and they would be sensibly 
influenced by his cautious and experienced 
judgment. 

Few of our ministers who have not been 
district superintendents can have any idea 
how frequently their most prominent and use- 
ful men open their hearts to him. They prob- 
ably know when officially appointed or self- 

161 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

constituted committees visit him. But they 
do not know how much he has been told about 
them and their work, nor how many times 
superintendents have helped pastors out of 
dangerous situations without their knowl- 
edge. The pastor's best interests lie in the 
direction of the strongest possible superin- 
tendency. 

The two most popular objections to the 
superintendency have been that congrega- 
tions did not care to hear superintendents 
preach, and official boards either neglected or 
refused to consult them. But these objections 
lie against superintendents rather than the 
superintendency. How soon the preachers 
grow restless under the administration of a 
weak superintendent! They know the value 
to the church and to themselves of a superin- 
tendent who commands the confidence of the 
laity. A stronger superintendency would 
mean fewer "calls" and "invitations." It 
would lay the stalking ghost of Congregation- 
alism. 

Can the Bishops Be Trusted? 
The experience of the church has demon- 

162 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

strated that the bishops could be trusted with 
the unlimited pastorate. Why should we look 
for a reversal of form if an indeterminate 
superintendency were placed in their hands? 
Three considerations would direct their man- 
agement of the new situation: 

1. The bishops would have to give the 
church a "justified superintendency"; that is 
to say, each appointment to the superintend- 
ency would have to justify itself, and each 
reappointment would be subjected to the acid 
test of efficiency. The bishops could not pos- 
sibly escape responsibility for the selection or 
retention of weak or unworthy men. The 
Annual Conversation would check up their 
judgment and bring quick relief if the results 
on any district had shown them to be at fault. 

2. The bishops could have no possible ex- 
cuse for tolerating an inefficient superin- 
tendent. They would have absolute power in 
the premises. This power should never be 
restricted in the least particular. The inde- 
terminate superintendency would put them in 
a position where this power would have to he 
exercised. The present limit has afforded the 
bishops a convenient haven of refuge — entirely 

163 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

too much so. They have been over-inclined 
to let the limit take its course. We do not 
censure them overmuch. The logic of the 
present law is in this direction. 

3. Life tenure in the episcopacy removes 
incentive to the suspicion of ulterior motives. 
The bishops do not have to "plan" for either 
reappointment or reelection. Their "calling 
and election is sure." They should know no 
man except through his work. It is incon- 
ceivable that the indeterminate superintend- 
ency would not be safe in their hands. 

Objections Threadbare and Theoretical 

How many theoretical objections might be 
formulated against life tenure in the episco- 
pacy? Anyone with a facile pen could frighten 
the church out of five years' growth by mar- 
shaling them in battle array. But the satis- 
factory experience of the church would out- 
weigh tons of unproven theories. 

The removal of the limit from the pastorate 
would put, so it was said, designing men in 
the pulpits of our great churches; these 
churches would soon become unmethodistic in 
doctrine and polity, unsympathetic toward 

164 



OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 

the great interests of the church; and a great 
many other terrible things were to happen 
that we need not take time to mention. In 
what section of the church have these calami- 
ties materialized? It was overlooked that the 
time limit was not the itinerancy, and that 
getting rid of one would not mean the destruc- 
tion of the other. The itinerancy with all its 
checks and balances is still with us. 

The same objection will be urged against the 
indeterminate district superintendency, but 
with less reason. The bishops will still have 
undisputed power over the incumbents of the 
office, such power as they never wielded 
under a "term" superintendency. With the 
annual review of the work by the bishop and 
pastors of the district it will be increasingly 
impossible for the wrong man to "hold on." 
The growing power of the laity will soon make 
itself felt more and more in the choice and 
retention of men for this important position. 

It is not the superintendent who may stay 
long that the church has to fear, but the super- 
intendent who should not stay at all. We 
contend that the greater publicity attached 
to the retention of men in an indeterminate 

165 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

superintendency, and the inevitable intensifi- 
cation of responsibilities, would largely pre- 
vent undesirable men from seeking the office 
and make it utterly impossible for them to 
keep it. 



166 



CHAPTER X 

THREE ALTERNATIVES— WHICH 
SHALL IT BE? 

The church faces a choice of three alterna- 
tives: (1) No District Superin tendency ; 
(2) the Limited Superintendency ; (3) the 
Indeterminate Superintendency. 

Shall We Give Up the Entire System? 

What then? That would be the poorest 
possible solution. It is conceded that we 
might "get along somehow." The amputation 
of one's right arm does not always mean the 
loss of one's life. But it does cripple one's 
efficiency and seriously limit future activities. 
The life of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
does not depend upon the retention or im- 
provement of the district superintendency. 
Amputating her right arm would hardly be 
equivalent to committing hari-kari. But if the 
church is determined upon this dubious course, 
she should first issue a proclamation stating 

167 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

that she is not moved by the conviction that 
her tasks will be easier or more speedily per- 
formed without the district superintendency, 
but actuated solely by the theoretical desire 
to see how long one can live and how much 
one can get done without a right arm ! 

Getting rid of the district superintendency 
would be one way of getting rid of some of 
the problems that cluster about the system. 
But many of the old problems would remain 
and new legions would soon come marching 
down the pike. The work would still demand 
thousands of delicate adjustments each year. 
Who would make them? Reckless churches 
and negligent pastors would ignore or defy the 
law of the denomination. Who would hold 
them in leash? Thousands of small congre- 
gations in isolated communities, accustomed to 
official oversight since their origin, would be 
suddenly thrown upon their own resources. 
How could their problems be solved? Great 
churches would still insist upon having their 
way regardless of right, reason, or the general 
welfare. Who would salvage the wreckage? 

The lure of the prophet's role — who has not 
felt it? But what curious blunderers time 
168 



THREE ALTERNATIVES 

makes out of some of our self-called and over- 
confident prophets ! George Washington once 
predicted that the territory west of Fort Cum- 
berland (now Cumberland, Maryland) would 
always remain a vast wilderness! However, 
said the wise man, while this wilderness would 
always continue the habitat of wild beasts 
and wilder men, no foreign government should 
be allowed to possess it. Would he not smile 
over that prophecy now? 

Perhaps the most brilliant and versatile 
theological professor the denomination has 
ever produced once declared, in the hearing 
of the writer, that if women were admitted to 
the General Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, one third of the member- 
ship would immediately withdraw, and the 
church would be rent with the greatest schism 
of her history. Do you recall the date of this 
modern exodus? This "rent" did not make a 
very loud noise. Time has shown that the 
great man made a rash assertion instead of 
voicing a prophecy. 

Carefully avoiding the temptation to 
prophesy, may we not timidly ask how the 
difficult system of an itinerant ministry is to 

169 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

be worked without the district superintend- 
ency? We have never appreciated properly 
the complications of this system because we 
have always had sufficient machinery, prop- 
erly geared, to make it work. We do not 
remember to have ever heard anyone say that 
the work could be more efficiently directed 
without the district superintendency. Its 
cost, not its inefficiency, has been the most 
frequent objection. Has it ever been asserted 
that the cost of the superintendency has really 
crippled the development of the church? Has 
the church been forced to abandon old terri- 
tory or prevented from entering new regions 
because overburdened with the support of the 
district superintendency? The question is 
absurd. The superintendency puts us any- 
where and keeps us everywhere. Not, what 
does it cost? but what does it do? is the true 
yard-stick by which all parts of our system 
should be measured. 

The postman has just handed the writer a 
letter. It comes from the divisional secretary 
of "The Commission on Finance and the Lay- 
men's Missionary Movement of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church." Permit the quotation of 

170 



THREE ALTERNATIVES 

the first two sentences verbatim : "The district 
superintendent is the Key Man in Methodism 
to-day. It is his privilege to mobilize the 
forces and lead them to victory." This is the 
tenor of every letter received from any general 
or divisional officer of the church. They know 
that no man on earth has the ear of the 
preachers and access to the church to the same 
extent as the district superintendent. If they 
can elicit his hearty cooperation, their tasks 
are more than half done. Do you know any 
of these officers who are not of this opinion? 
Whenever acute dissatisfaction with the 
superintendency has existed it has originated 
in the bungling administration of the office or 
the persistent retention by succeeding bishops 
of an incompetent or obnoxious incumbent. 
These evils are curable, without lowering the 
vitality of the patient in the least. Dissatis- 
fied individuals usually overlook the fact that 
their impatience is with the officer and not 
with the office — a vital distinction. 

Shall We Conclude to Let Well Enough 
Alone? 

"The limited superintendency has not been 

171 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

disastrous to the church. The denomination 
has grown by leaps and bounds. Why not be 
satisfied ?" 

"Experiments are perilous. Innovations 
often introduce havoc. The limited superin- 
tendency is about all we have left of the old 
order. Cannot one of the old landmarks be 
left? Must we be torn up all the time?" 

Well, the church was growing rapidly when 
the pastorate was limited to six months. The 
glorious gospel of free grace and full salva- 
tion was sweeping like wild-fire across the 
continent when the limit was lifted from two 
and put down at three years. So it has ever 
been. 

Changes have not been made because the 
church had ceased to grow and new experi- 
ments were needed. We may devoutly thank 
God that the church has never faced a prob- 
lem like that. Changes have come because 
the church has found herself facing new prob- 
lems introduced by new conditions in society, 
that had to be met with a new alignment of 
her forces. While principles never change, 
conditions are never stationary. We are all 
agreed that the itinerancy shall never be 

172 



THREE ALTERNATIVES 

violated, but the application of the principle 
of the itinerancy, in all its varied ramifica- 
tions, must be governed by the developing con- 
ditions in human society. Therefore, changes 
are inevitable, unless we Avish to invite stagna- 
tion, despondency, and death. 

The limited pastorate did well, the unlimited 
pastorate does better. The unlimited pastorate 
would not have done so well in the beginning. 
The few great preachers would have settled 
down over local congregations for life. Untried 
and untrained men could not have been em- 
ployed so freely in the work. Preachers were 
not fitted for a limitless pastorate, and churches 
would not have grown so rapidly under it. It 
was a peculiar age, and God, in his infinite 
wisdom, gave us the ministry for it. But 
present conditions make longer and still longer 
pastorates both desirable and necessary. 

A brief superintendency once answered 
every purpose. The duties of the superin- 
tendent were onerous but simple. Churches 
were small, scattered, and their problems few. 
Evangelism, immediate and persistent, was the 
one great task. But the church to-day is of 
massive proportions. Her problems have 
173 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

grown in number and complexity. The modern 
district superintendent finds himself at the 
head of a complicated organization. About 
the time he begins to comprehend the duties 
and possibilities of the office his "term" ends. 
His successor is also an untrained man. 

You blame the superintendent for being a 
creature of "routine." He is not so much a 
"creature" as he is a "victim." Imagine your- 
self in his place. If you were suddenly thrust 
into this office without training for its tasks 
or study of its duties and opportunities, what 
would you do and how would you do it? 
Would you not begin by doing just about 
what other district superintendents have done 
and in about the same way? How could you 
do differently? Without previous experience 
and no special training you would necessarily 
follow the routine traditions of the office, 
would you not? No beginner in the superin- 
tendency can be an innovator. The preachers 
would suspect his judgment; the churches 
would smile at his brashness. The one factor 
necessary to make our superintendents leaders 
— time — is denied them. If the district super- 
intendency is worth while, why not put it 

174 



THREE ALTERNATIVES 

down on its two feet and give it a fair chance 
to show what it is good for? 

Shall It Be the Indeterminate 
superintendency ? 

We are thoroughly convinced that if the 
church will give extended consideration to this 
subject, the limit will go from the superin- 
tendence as it has gone from the pastorate. 
When the right man has been found for the 
superintendency he should be permitted to 
stay until he has had an opportunity to do his 
best work. Many men eminently fitted for the 
pastorate are entirely out of place in the super- 
intendency. The office requires a peculiar 
type. And it is just as true to say that many 
men adapted to the superintendency do not 
get along so well in the pastorate. Men an- 
swering both these descriptions will be at once 
recalled by the observant reader. It is no 
discredit to one that he is not like the other. 
God fitted each man for his place. We make 
the confusion by insisting upon putting the 
right man in the wrong place. 

When an Annual Conference has a man 
temperamentally adapted, spiritually equip- 
175 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

ped, intellectually qualified for the superin- 
tendence^ with that gift of speech, poise of 
judgment, vision, and daring which the work 
of the office demands, why not put him into 
the superintendency and let him stay until he 
has fulfilled his mission? The church has 
always done this with her bishops ; she is now 
doing it with her pastors. The reasons for 
doing it with her district superintendents are 
just the same and just as urgent. 

The district superintendent, "the Key Man" 
in Methodism: "Loose him and let him go!" 



176 



ADDENDA 

The following statement from the Rev. W. 
B. Hollingshead, D.D., than whom no man in 
Methodism is better qualified to speak con- 
cerning the present status of the district super- 
intendency, is a significant confirmation of 
the preceding argument, especially as touch- 
ing the two main contentions of the work: 
(1) The present utility of the superin tend- 
ency, and (2) the necessity for the removal 
of the vexatious time limit. He speaks "as 
one having authority." 

Dr. Hollingshead occupies the responsible 
position of Chairman of Appropriations for 
the Benevolent Boards and Societies of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. It is his duty 
to reduce the benevolent achievements of each 
district to the cold rhetoric of unimpassioned 
figures. He not only watches the district 
thermometer rise and fall, but, what is of 
vastly greater importance, he knows why it 
rises and why it falls. He tells us that the 
177 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

"why" should be spelled "District Superin- 
tendent." But read what he says : 

Increased Efficiency by Extension of Term 

The machinery of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church might run for a year or two without 
the district superintendency, hut before the 
end of the quadrennium it would become per- 
fectly evident that this is the one office which 
holds together our entire system of church 
government. 

The office of district superintendent is a 
man's job, and its duties and responsibilities 
call for the very highest type of ministerial 
and executive efficiency that the church can 
produce. Practically all objections to dis- 
trict superintendency come from those who 
are unacquainted with the duties and respon- 
sibilities of the office — these objections fre- 
quently arising from the fact that the office 
has been abused by incompetent men. 

A man who has not made an eminent suc- 
cess as a pastor seldom proves an efficient dis- 
trict superintendent. The last man in the 
church whose appointment should be influ- 
enced by verbal representations from com- 



ADDENDA 

mittees, whether of laymen or of ministers, is 
the district superintendent. His appointment 
should depend primarily upon his ministerial 
record. If charges have run down under his 
leadership, it is more than probable that a 
district would do likewise. 

Bishops should have absolute freedom in 
respect to the appointment of men who are to 
serve as subbishops. A bishop who gathers 
about himself a strong corps of assistants, or 
district superintendents, can revolutionize the 
general results of his episcopal area within a 
quadrennium. 

A minister who fails to look after the con- 
nectional interests of the church, no matter 
what other qualifications he may possess, is 
not fit to be appointed district superintendent. 

The district superintendent becomes per- 
sonally acquainted with the official members 
within his district. He, as no other man, 
knows the needs of the whole field. Without 
his advice and counsel the general superin- 
tendent is often powerless. The general super- 
intendent has power for five or six days in a 
year. During these days, he counsels with 
district superintendents. Then, for three hun- 
179 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

dred and sixty days, the district superintend- 
ent is in charge and seeks counsel of the 
general superintendent. 

Great districts may be developed just as 
great pastoral charges, and the same argu- 
ments that hold for a continuous term of office 
for pastors hold with even greater force con- 
cerning district superintendents. Nothing 
has been more hurtful to our Methodism than 
to have the policies and efforts of district 
superintendents cut off by the time limit, thus 
frequently setting back the work by delegating 
the leadership to men who undo what wiser 
men have done. 

An unlimited term for efficient men would 
be infinitely better for the interests of the 
church than a short term for inefficient 
leaders. Under a permanent superintendency 
much may be accomplished toward solving 
some of our great city problems which have 
never been successfully worked out. 

The records show conclusively that the best 
results have been accomplished under the 
leadership of men who have had much experi- 
ence in district work. The church has noth- 
ing to fear from a continuous superintendency. 
180 



ADDENDA 

That which would hold successful men in 
office would draw to the office a much stronger 
class of men. Every argument that holds 
good concerning the continuous office in the 
episcopacy applies equally as well to success- 
ful men in the subepiscopacy. 

The office of district superintendent is not 
an honor position to be handed around as a 
reward of merit for a long service in the pas- 
torate, but a position carrying with it that 
which calls for the highest type of ministerial 
efficiency. There is no greater work in the 
church than district work; but so long as the 
fatal six-years' term remains many of our 
strongest leaders will continue to refuse to 
fill the position. 

As to the cost of our district superintend- 
ency, it is so slight as to be unworthy of 
serious consideration — the cost per member 
being less than five cents for each quarterly 
visit. Yet there is no man in the church to 
whom the local church is more greatly in- 
debted than to the district superintendent. 
There are four hundred and ninety-one qf 
these men, widely distributed throughout the 
United States, intrusted with the duties and 

181 



THE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT 

responsibilities which have to do with the 
making of Methodism. Take them out of the 
field, and at once the whole machinery of 
the church must undergo a process of recon- 
struction. 

Wm. B. Hollingshead. 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 
March 2, 1915. 



182 



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